[Wayne Luke]

Google doesn't have an chance of gaining market share against Microsoft with their stated plans.

1) Its going to be a netbook operating system. Netbooks today primarily run on Linux. Microsoft is just entering the market with a customized version of XP.

2) All applications on their Chrome OS, are going to be web-based. This makes the device worthless if you don't have an internet connection. Unlike Linux or XP based machines.

3) They'll be eating into their own sales with the lackluster sales of Android, which is designed to be a phone and netbook OS. It only has a small portion of the market right now as it is with less than a million units. Compared to 20 million iPhones, 20 million Windows Mobile units and 10 million Blackberry devices sold last year. Not to mention competition from Palm, LG and Samsung.

4) They'll need to ink deals with netbook suppliers. Dell and HP already use Linux and XP, while the others use Linux. They will need to have something extraordinary out of the gate to have the netbooks work with the software on the market or they won't get hardware deals.

5) At least initially, you won't be able to download this OS freely. It will come as part of a hardware package. Nothing stifles sales of an OS more than hardware bundling. Ask Apple about how hardware bundling with their OS has allowed them to achieve market domination.

6) Google can't even get plugins working in the Chrome Browser. I don't know how they think they will pull off a viable online application store.

7) We're probably 5 years away before the Chrome OS is viable on a PC. Long time to market. During that time, Windows 7, Linux and OSX will continue to improve. While Google's Chrome OS will be languishing on a platform that accounts for less than 1% of total PC sales worldwide.

I know Google walks on water, eats ambrosia and drinks mead with the gods but I feel they are spreading themselves too thin and there are already hints of a federal anti-trust investigation being started on them. Only time will tell but I don't think their current plan will hurt Microsoft in the least.