I am not here to be a party pooper but if you look at the profile of the countries where broadband is a laggard, it speaks for itself. It only reflects a huge pent up demand for a “regular internet” than a crippled version of the mobile internet.

The beauty of Opera is that it’s available for a huge range of handsets; including java based crapware that is lowly bottom of the end stuff. Agreed that most people cannot afford a smartphone (it’s an overkill), still it reflects the pattern of usage.

This is bound to create a lot of interest for advertising which surprisingly Opera has been able to keep it as a free platform. Although I have tried the beta version of their mobile browser on Android, there is nothing to write home about; I invariably fall back on the Mini version. In case I have to tether my useless Docomo GPRS to my laptop, I use an emulator which makes checking email and going through some mobile optimized web site easily.

This also means that the desktop version is going to lag in “love”; something that Opera employees deny strongly. As a company, it has one of the worst outreach towards it’s customers; try getting the contact details of the key people. They seem to have “hired” forum trolls because any word of criticism is hushed up immediately or the forum thread locked up. Their extensions are bare bones (unlike the Chromium API which is fairly stable) and does not allow interaction with the key features of the browser.

This isn’t technical debate about how the browser wars play out in the real web but in my opinion, Chromium (on Linux) is perceptibly fast. Although Firefox Beta has seen a wonderful improvement over it’s previous versions but it’s useless implementation of extensions means that a bare bones browser is as good as useless.

Ironically, this post on Opera is made using Chromium; I use Feedly (intermittently for RSS Feeds), Google Reader with a focussed tab and souped up with wonderful extensions to make my life easier when going through over 500 articles per day. I have (yes, wonderful) Thunderbird for IMAP Access; although a bit of pain to focus on one window to another but Opera has screwed (and fucked) up it’s Mail implementation.

Hope that opera now implements it’s Fastmail acquisition properly. If I can read the tea leaves properly, Opera would want to leverage itself as a “leading brand for mobile applications/other than desktop” category. Primarily reason is that internet access is now moving away (slowly and steadily) from the desktop/laptop combination. With huge profit base in the mobile applications, I see that there is no reason to innovate on the Linux/BSD/alternative platforms over a period of time.

That’s where Chromium is slowly becoming the centre stage; with a slow but steady shift to cloud computing as a platform. Mobile access is one part of the key in this game.

Tags: Advertising, android, API, Broadband, Browser wars, Chromium, Computing, crapware, Google, GPRS, handsets, Internet, Java, laptop, Linux, Media, Mobile, Opera, Telecommunications India

A couple of days back I had written about cloud computing; whether or not it is relevant to Indian scenario given the state of the broadband networks and how they function. 4G is not yet launched and we still have to see it’s widespread deployment.

It can also be argued that Cloud computing offers a “cheaper alternative” for net access. For all the noise behind Chrome OS, it remains a re-worked implementation of Linux under the core with fancy “apps” and the browser as central to the computing experience.

To be honest, I hardly use my laptop for anything else. My computing time is solely meant for web access and once Google Voice/Skype have sense enough to implement the technology across the browsers, the other mode of “desktop applications” would become redundant.

It can also be argued about Google OS to be a cheap and effective way to roll out the product or say something like Airtel coming up with a fancy idea of having Airtel-Google branded laptops or netbooks being given “free” with contracts. However, for all this optimistic line of thought, I feel that the market is still not ripe to jump the gun.

Lets see what does Eric Schmidt has to say about it:

With Chrome OS, we have in development a viable third choice in desktop operating systems. Before there was no cloud computing alternative—now we have a product which is fast, robust and scalable enough to support powerful platforms. It’s something computer scientists have been dreaming about for a very, very long time. The kind of magic that we could imagine 20 years ago, but couldn’t make real because we lacked the technology. As developers start playing with our beta Cr-48 Chrome OS computer, they’ll see that while it’s still early days it works unbelievably well. You can build everything that you used to mix and match with client software—taking full advantage of the capacity of the web.

Ignore the brave words.

There is a competing product from Google: Android. It can again be effectively argued that they are separate and none can be adapted for other usage. I digress.

Android, despite ruling the roost on the mobile handsets, needs a lot more polish and push from Google to make it auto upgradeable. I own one from Samsung and hate the loaded crapware. I’d have to flash the ROM and install something else but that’s left from some other day.

Yet in this saga, can Google ever hope to monetise it’s offering? I can assume that after the Chrome OS reaches a critical mass (if and ever), it would be flooded with advertisements. Owning a laptop with loaded Chrome OS is the perfect platform for targetting those niggly ads that guarantee you a better erection in bed. In any case, the volumes are going to come only from the enterprise and that is not going to change in a hurry.

Brave words indeed but here’s a sampling of the common sense that has prevailed in the dark corners of cyberspace:

And any reasonably competent IT executive can plainly see that Google, for all of their algorithmic might, isn’t known for product longevity.

Sure, their core web products have been around for a while and aren’t going anywhere. But they launch a lot more products every year that we quickly forget about, and many of the unsuccessful products are quietly discontinued a few months or years later.

Google’s just not in the business of providing long-term support for an unsuccessful product line. It’s part of what allows them to keep releasing new things all the time while geeks declare Microsoft a boring old dinosaur. But IT departments need their platform vendors to behave much more like Microsoft.

Sad but true.

Hence, in this scenario, I don’t foresee a bright future but it seems to be another flash in the pan from the mavericks. It’s hard to say how this shapes up, how they advertise or strike deals with the manufacturers or how they wish to tone up their advertising platform.

Tags: Advertisement, Advertising, Airtel, android, Broadband, Computing, crapware, Google, handsets, India, laptop, Linux, Microsoft, Mobile, Opera, operating system, Telecommunications India

It is too difficult to say what is going to be the outcome. Whether, anyone in India can hit the right balance between price and performance and the requisite broadband networks.

Interestingly, the working model displayed by Google has a tie up with Verizon who I believe is in the process of setting up 4G networks for faster broadband access and has gone live in 38 plus cities in US. India is not far behind in the 4G race though and it is Mukesh Ambani who plans to get in the race.

Possibly, I foresee limited accounts with perhaps bundled connections. Mukesh and his cohorts would be very happy to mass produce Chinese crapware bundled with some customized version of Google OS/Jolicloud kind of a mash up. I remember some dorks advertising on Business Standard about network computing; they haven’t replied back to a long list of my queries though a subsequent letter to the editor was published. (I am too lazy to fish out the bookmarks for the time being).

Hence, 4G (LTE) or cloud computing is too esoteric concept for this nation. It is something similar to One laptop per Child project to which Indian Government mercifully rejected the contention. Instead they were keen to promote something like $20 laptop or something. Idiots.

I am not too keen to trust on the cloud computing in any form. I keep a back up of all my files and in any case, it needs polished networks without huge amount of latency built in. Otherwise, the end user experience would be pathetic. It does allow for “off line” usage but I am not too keen on such a product.

Tags: Advertising, Broadband, Broadband access, Business Standard, Chinese, Computing, crapware, Google, Idiots, India, laptop, Telecommunications India