May 30, 2011
Let's begin this story the same way a murder mystery starts -- with a few bare facts. The victim is Google's Chromebook. The crime scene is Forrester's IT Forum in Las Vegas, and the alleged suspect is George Colony, chairman and CEO of the research firm.
In the opening scene, there is the Chromebook computer, our victim, trapped with no place to hide or means to defend itself.
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The Chromebook has no intelligence, no local storage, and only works when connected to the Web. Having sized up his victim, Colony then moves in. Chromebooks, based on Google's new Chrome OS, will be available next month.
The gunshot.
"I thought this was one of the greatest acts of corporate idiocy that I've ever seen," Colony said of Google's Chromebook.
CSI is now on the scene, so let's rewind the story and discover motive.
Colony's belief about Chromebook comes from a Forrester worldview that has people gradually shifting away from the Internet to mobile-type apps as the primary means of getting information. The trend is driven by iPhone and Android smartphone users, he added.
Forrester calls the widespread use of mobile apps the App Internet. The App Internet market has reached at $2.2 billion worldwide and is growing at an 85 percent annual compound rate, the researcher says.
"That is the architecture of the future," said Colony.
Google is too Web centric, he adds. "They love the Web," said Colony.
There is a mitigating factor for Google: its Android business does depend on mobile apps. But Colony notes that Google still makes nearly all its revenue from Web ads, which helps explain the Chromebook and why Google, as well as PC vendors, are "at risk" in making a transition to an app-focused world.
To adapt to the App Internet hardware vendors like Hewlett-Packard and Dell will have to change their models, said Colony. A key question, he says: Can they reform the PC to live in an App Internet world?
Microsoft "gets it to an extent," says Colony, pointing to its Silverlight framework, which he praised for its potential as an app development platform.
In Forrester's new world, where people rely on apps rather than browsers, even companies like Facebook are at risk, argued Colony. He criticized Facebook for its lack iPad apps and said a competitor could make "major trouble" for the company.
For his audience of IT professionals here, Colony said the transition to a focus on Apple- and Android-like apps will mean major changes. Among them, skills will have to be updated, since most apps are written in Objective-C, C++ and Mobile Java.
An app-centric universe also means changing the architecture of information delivery.
Andrei Palskoi, a principal consultant and solutions architect for FICO, a provider of analytics and decision management technology, said if the model Colony describes comes to pass it will mean a shift to a decentralized architecture.
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