Tag Archives: Google Chrome

Chrome Notebooks: Any business model for developing nations?

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Google Chrome OS Concept

A lot has been made up for Google Chrome OS and it’s notebook. It transpires that Samsung and Acer would manufacture laptops for chrome OS.

Is cloud computing inherently better than the “offline model” we have come to rely on? If the recent Amazon outage is any indication, I would prefer not to stick with it. In the same vein, I prefer my data to stay with me.

However, there is a huge business opportunity lurking behind such an initiative. Manufacturers in India (for netbooks/laptops/tablets) are dependent on Microsoft for a tapered down version of it’s utterly useless operating system. They could have easily sponsored a home grown “Indian initiative” for Linux and installed it on a bare bones hardware with Wifi and 3G connectivity. I reckon that using ARM processors, a basic display unit with a keyboard would suffice the price limit of around $200-250. It can be done.

One doesn’t need dual cores to run the fancy software; in any case, I hardly use the computing power at my disposal. But there was no choice in the market. Antix (a derivative of SimplyMepis) or even Arch Linux are good enough alternatives (not to forget Fluxbox and XFCE or E17) as the alternative desktop platforms to power the applications.

The telecom companies could have easily subsidized the model, charging it in their monthly bills. A win win situation. An operating system free of any hassles and companies get to spread the hardware with bundled data plans. I had earlier explored the same option but I guess the fancy CEO’s (who are glorified assholes anyway), are not interested in the blurb.

So you’d find the Vodafone Zoozoo enticing people to try out 3G in a market where computing is still a luxury and smartphones market sorely limited.

Thats stupidity compounded by assholism (of the extreme); because crores are being spent on advertising to milk the few customers who venture to buy out the expensive data plans.

Blah blah blah.

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Disappointing statistics

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The methodology can always be disputed. India lags behind China in everything and not surprisingly in adoption to open source. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 still rules the roost and I strongly suspect that the Government of the day has not passed notifications to “upgrade their infrastructure”.

Interestingly, the statics from stat counter tell a different story. If you look carefully, the bars are segmented differently for Chrome (having multiple instances) whereas, “other browsers” are lumped in one category.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

(This allows the script to be run on the blog, please disable any ad blockers or No-script if you have one enabled).

Interesting. Although I insist that I don’t agree to the opaque methodology being used here; there could be many variables linked to the actual usage statistics. Opera Mini rules the roost as far as mobile browsers are concerned. This is also a reflection of the broadband uptake; pathetic story.

This also set me thinking. Why don’t we have something similar in India? Why can’t we have any application developed locally to visualize data?

Some minor changes

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Mozilla Firefox Icon

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I have shifted to Firefox beta builds and I must admit that after a long time, there has been a credible worthwhile option in the Open Source. I have always aligned with open source; though I have been using Opera as my default browser. The annoyances come in when one can’t customize the software to one’s taste.

For example, Thunderbird allows one to set up multiple email identities. Opera mail refuses to listen to it’s customers (be it on their news servers or their forums). Although I have to admit that it terms of GUI or innovations, nothing beats it; even though their software sucks.

In any case, Chromium was too overbearing for me in the past few builds; it was refusing to open up, sucking up on the experience. And I have no qualms in admitting the fact that Firefox is indeed the next Chrome; the browser battles have been drawn up clearly and it remains to be see how it finishes off.

Opera would remain at it’s pathetic best unless they open up the API‘s and make it more extensible. At present, because of its poor market share AND lack of “open source”, desktop is sucking up. The problem is that it extends to their entire ecosystem (on mobile phones and other platforms) that is impossible for them to open up the code. Well, thats part of the reason.

I have my annoyances with BSNL broadband off and on… and I am looking at the computational databases with interest. Broadband has a lot of potential; it remains to be seen how we extend our imagination.

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