[LINK] Google's plan for world domination [Was: Google Inc's 'first?' hardware - google phone]

[Richard Chirgwin]

David Boxall wrote:
> It's all part of the Grand Plan:
> <http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/gacl>
>   
>> Until Chrome <http://www.google.com/chrome> came along, Google's 
>> Master Mobile Plan didn't quite add up. Now it does. Chrome -- 
>> Google's new superbrowser -- is cream on the top of a new mobile 
>> software stack. Let's call it GACL, for /Gears, Android and Chrome on 
>> Linux/. Gears <http://gears.google.com/> is a way to run Web apps on 
>> desktops and store data locally as well as in the cloud. Android 
>> <http://code.google.com/android/> is a development framework for 
>> Linux-based mobile devices. Chrome is a browser, but not just for 
>> pages. Chrome also runs apps. In that respect, it's more than the 
>> UI-inside-a-window that all browsers have become. It's essentially an 
>> operating system.
>>     
> ...
>   
>> Remember back when Marc Andreessen raised Microsoft's hackles by 
>> saying <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/msdoj/transcript/summaries1.html> 
>> Netscape would "reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device 
>> drivers"? Netscape failed to do that, but Google won't.
>>     
> ...
>
>   
<sigh>
I'd love to give this a rant, but it's hard to know where to start.

1) Why do I need another layer between the operating system and the
application?
2) Why is an "application" from Google turned into a "platform" merely
because the clue-free zone says so, and even when Google says "it's not
a platform".
3) Gears was a dead duck, and just because Chrome is somehow exciting
won't change the deadness of the duck.

> At the top is a browser built from the start to run apps and not just
> pages.
...An idea which is reduces the utility of the application, reduces the
utility of the browser, reduces the security of both, makes the browser
even more of an application dependency, breaks accessibility, restricts
user freedom, gives two fingers to standards ... a bad idea in every way
I can immediately think of.
> By offering mobile developers an alternative way for making their
> mobile applications run on handsets, even when no wireless connection
> exists, Google is paving the way for developers to build browser-based
> applications that can run on any mobile platform, as opposed to having
> to build separate versions of their applications in order to support
> those same mobile platforms.
<gags> What? You mean people never had this idea before, only to have it
spiked by the various interests at work in the mobile industry? Where
was Doc Searles when all the other versions of "universal mobile
application environments" died in the backside?

I'll toss up another thought while on the subject. The last thing we
should do is encourage people to think that the heavily mediated,
gated-community of mobile networks is a genuine Internet connection,
because it's not.

> What happens when the best-debugged devices are driven by GACL,
> without limitations imposed by any one company's lock-ins?
Except, of course, for Google's one-company lock-ins.

This isn't commentary, it's fandom; all critical facilities suspended.

RC