Google Chrome OS - don't believe the hype (just yet)

Over the course of 10 years in technology journalism and 10 years before that working in the IT industry, I have developed a knee-jerk anti-hype reaction.

When a new product or technology is announced and the world of IT experts cranks instantly into hyperbole, it equally instantly brings out in me a degree of cynicism.

Today’s “announcement” of Google’s plan to build a Chrome operating system (OS) is currently having just that affect.

For one thing it’s a blog post, rather than any formal product announcement, on which Google will not comment further – suggesting that at this stage there is not much else to say. The timing – as Microsoft gears up to launch Windows 7 later this year and is due to preview its Azure cloud development system this week – is pretty much indicative of good old-fashioned guerilla marketing.

Then there’s the over-the-top reaction to anything Google does.

Take this example – Rob Enderle, a reasonably well respected US analyst, told the BBC: "This announcement is huge. This is the first time we have had a truly competitive OS on the market in years. This is potentially disruptive and is the first real attempt by anyone to go after Microsoft.”

Can you count the ways this comment is just so wrong? Without wishing to criticise Rob himself – I’m attacking the hyperbole of which his statement is just one example - let me help.

“Huge”? Again, it’s a blog post, there is very little real detail, every gap is filled in by pure speculation.

“The first truly competitive OS market in years”? For one, Chrome OS doesn’t actually exist, it won’t be available for at least a year, so isn’t much of a competitor to anyone just yet. Plus I’m sure Linux advocates might have something to say too.

“The first real attempt by anyone to go after Microsoft”? I think even the European Union competition commission would admit that Microsoft does actually have a few competitors. And I’m sure Apple Mac users would be just as vociferous as Linux fans in extolling the competitive benefits of their products.

Without a doubt Chrome OS is an interesting development, one that has been on the cards for some time. It’s a natural evolution of what Google has been doing with tools such as Gears and the Chrome web browser (which, by the way, remains a distant fourth in the browser market with just two per cent share).

But I can’t honestly imagine any IT leader worth their salt will seriously spend the next 12 months waiting for Chrome OS to appear before evaluating whether or not to move to Windows 7. And besides, Microsoft's research teams are already working on a project called Gazelle that seems to be going down similar lines of a brower-oriented OS.

Your usual tech crowd of anti-Microsoft enthusiasts will lap up Chrome OS as soon as it appears of course. And equally, any IT leader worth their salt will take a look and test how well the system works with their business applications and see if there are some users for whom it might be appropriate as a low-cost (presumably – no pricing or licensing details yet) alternative for netbook users who just need basic web access.

The emerging competition in enterprise software between Google and Microsoft promises to be fascinating battle – one driven by ideology as much as technology. Google will be trying to convince people they do not need a big function-rich desktop operating system, while Microsoft wants to prove that Windows is the best way into the cloud.

But let’s at least wait until both companies have some actual products to evaluate, rather than exploding with excitement at the slightest hint of Googlejam tomorrow.

PS – One interesting aspect of the Chrome OS announcement was pointed out by RedMonk analyst James Governor on his Twitter feed today. If Chrome OS is a genuine competitor to Windows, will the EU now revisit its anti-trust case against Microsoft in the light of Google’s plans? Given that Microsoft has been forced to offer Windows 7 without a browser pre-installed, with Google be also told to sell Chrome OS without the Chrome browser? It won’t of course, but it does highlight some of the flaws in the EU case.

Google meets the NHS? Politicians show their IT naivety again

The Tories like technology. They increasingly seem to think IT is going to help them win the General Election due next year. And they might be right – in fact, getting behind the tech sector would not be a bad policy for anyone to pursue, as Labour has already realised with its Digital Britain plan.

But, as I have written before, the Conservatives seem to be bring with them the same optimistic naivety that has blighted the Labour government’s IT track record.

The Times today reports that the Tories could bring in a policy that would see NHS patients storing their electronic medical records on web-based private sector systems run by the likes of Microsoft and Google.

The Times claims this as an exclusive, despite the fact David Cameron announced the concept in April and Computing wrote about it at the time, but I digress.

The newspaper quotes a Tory source saying: “We’re thinking about how in government the architecture of technology needs to change, with people ‘owning’ their own data, including their health records.”

The idea of citizens owning their own data is welcomed, it’s a concept that could work, and was first suggested in a different context by former HBOS chief executive James Crosby in a report on ID cards he produced for the Treasury two years ago (which was pretty much ignored by the Home Office at the time, but I digress again).

But to think that simply letting people put their medical records online will be easier or cut costs is disturbingly naïve.

The questions that would need to be addressed pour out:

• Will people have to pay?

• If not, how would Microsoft and Google make money? By charging the NHS? By selling data? By selling contextualized adverts to be viewed alongside your records? (“Over 45? Have you thought about Botox yet?” Honestly, the mind boggles…)
• What about connecting to GPs’ existing systems?
• How would a medical professional know which service hosts a patient’s records – especially if that patient is in a critical condition or unconscious?
• What about security – what guarantees are there that a Microsoft/Google system is more secure than one run by government?
• What if Google suffers a temporary crash, as it did with its Gmail email service earlier this year – thus rendering patient records inaccessible?
• How would private sector online applications be integrated with other NHS systems such as electronic prescriptions?
• How much work would be required to re-develop Microsoft and Google’s online health records systems to conform to NHS practices – a challenge that has proved to be a major problem for the US suppliers of packaged software currently trying to implement the National Programme for IT?
• And who would actually own the data and be legally responsible for its protection?

I could go on.

Labour should have learned by now the downside of technology over-optimism. Tony Blair rightly saw that IT-enabled change was the key to transforming public services and his government set out down that road with enthusiasm. But they soon discovered that delivery was a rather more complex affair.

Politically-driven deadlines for IT projects have inevitably slipped. And where politics over-rode IT, such as the disastrously rushed tax credits system, everyone suffered as projects went live too soon.

I’m sure there are votes – and certainly attractive national newspaper headlines – to be gained by populist ideas such as giving electronic patient records to Google. Come to think about it, while you’re at it, why not make them available through Apple’s iPhone app store?

As the NHS is already finding out to its cost, introducing e-records is a massively complex task, and just by stamping the names Google or Microsoft all over them does not make them any cheaper, easier, or more likely to succeed.

A lesson in government IT transparency

Here is a lesson in openness and transparency for everyone working in UK government IT.

President Barack Obama’s new federal chief information officer (CIO), Vivek Kundra, has launched a web-based IT dashboard, detailing the spending and project progress of government technology initiatives in the US.

The dashboard can be found here: http://it.usaspending.gov .

The web site allows citizens to track the progress of projects over time, and includes information on more than 7,000 initiatives, of which nearly 800 are classified as “major”.

The dashboard shows costs involved and the number of projects classified according to their status and progress - whether they are “normal”, “needs attention” or “significant concerns”. The site is currently a beta version, and there are a few glitches that need to be ironed out.

But what a refreshingly open approach – and how contrasting with the UK.

Come on John Suffolk, UK government CIO, how about something similar for this country?

Carry on ID cards - the increasingly farcical scheme

Work this one out. The Home Office has announced that it will speed up the rollout of identity cards so that more UK citizens can purchase one if they want, and sooner than before.

At the same time, ID cards will no longer be compulsory for airside workers at Manchester and London City airports, the first locations due to trial the cards.

Given that the sole reasoning for making airside workers the initial target was because of the sensitive security issues surrounding their employment, making cards voluntary for such staff makes a total mockery of the plan.

There is no point in using ID cards as a security device if some people do not have one.

Yet the announcement has been packaged up as an affirmation of the government’s commitment to the scheme by highlighting the “benefits of identity cards to those who need them most.”

And who might they be, exactly? Have you met anyone crying out to own an ID card?

The whole programme is becoming increasingly farcical. Unless Labour win the General Election next year it is dead in the water because both Tories and Liberal Democrats (just in case there’s a hung Parliament…) have pledged to scrap the scheme as soon as they can.

And in the increasingly unlikely eventuality that Labour do win another term in office, ID cards must surely be one of the obviously expensive projects that would be cut to help pay for the national debt.

ID cards is limping along painfully, and really deserves to be put out of its misery as soon as possible.

[I'll just add an extra personal note to this. I've never had a problem in principle with the issuance of identity cards in the UK. Plenty of European countries have them and they don't seem to have caused any major breaches of their civil liberties. But the government's attempts to sell ID cards to citizens have become increasingly desperate and rather pathetic - the number of shifts made in the rationale for owning one has become legendary. If ever there was a scheme that seems so obviously to be destined for failure and wasted cash it is this one, in its current form. The government would do better to go back to the drawing board, come up with a meaningful and well thought-out plan for authenticating our digital identity, and start from scratch with something that might have value to citizens.]

Digital Britain: Not perfect, but a good place to start

When culture secretary Ben Bradshaw finished his speech introducing the Digital Britain report to Parliament, his Tory shadow stood up and dismissed the report as a “disappointment”.

Over the next few days you will undoubtedly hear other vested interests proclaiming the faults of the wide-ranging plan, pointing out its deficiencies, omissions and flaws.

My advice would be to keep the well-worn phrase “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” in mind as you assess the responses.

If you put aside the inevitable quibbles about individual proposals and recommendations, this is a hugely ambitious programme and frankly the government deserves congratulation for attempting it. If there is one major criticism I would make, it is to ask why we waited so long for such a report.

If Digital Britain is implemented as planned, it will help the UK take a huge step forward in putting technology at the heart of our economy, our workplaces and our lives – something that Computing has called for more times than I can remember, and which can only benefit the IT profession.

The £6 per year “broadband tax” to fund rollout of next-generation networks will attract a lot of headlines and controversy, but if it helps deliver superfast connectivity, it will be worth it.

There will be cynicism – from me included – about a lot of the proposals, especially relating to skills development, that resemble too many past, failed initiatives.

And there will be those who question the commitment to online public services, universal broadband and digital inclusion after even Ofcom research has shown there is a significant minority of people in the UK who have no interest in going online whatsoever.

But as report author Lord Carter said: “Digital Britain is a statement of intent and ambition, a commitment to infrastructure and access, and an overdue recognition of the industrial importance of the creative industries."

The plan is best viewed as a whole, and indeed this may be judged greater than the sum of its parts, which will be pulled apart and scrutinised and in some cases no doubt discarded. It’s a first step and mistakes will inevitably be made along the way.

But come on – IT industry, digital industry, creative industries, ask yourselves: This is far, far better than the nothing we have been used to.

Click here for more Computing coverage of Digital Britain.

Choose your analogy in the great broadband bandwidth war

BT has become the latest ISP to complain that content providers should contribute to the cost of their bandwidth-hungry services to broadband customers.

BT Retail managing director John Petter said that content providers could not expect “a free ride” if users are to continue receiving services at an affordable price.

Tiscali has been another high-profile advocate of this so-called two-tier internet in the past (although quite possibly because it was financially screwed).

A debate is rapidly brewing about what web-heads know as “net neutrality” – the concept that all content on the internet is considered equal. ISPs say this is unsustainable – they claim that high-bandwidth services such as YouTube and the BBC iPlayer are so popular they hog too much space in their broadband pipes, which costs them a lot of money to ensure that all users get the service they pay for.

BT is now calling for the BBC and others to pay ISPs for delivering their services, as their share of meeting the needs of broadband users.

It’s a particularly topical debate, with the Digital Britain report due next week expected to introduce universal broadband to anyone who wants it across the UK.

I’ll get back to my personal view – which is that the ISPs should get used to it and stop moaning – later.

What entertains me most about the argument is how everyone tries to find the best analogy to support their point of view.

BT has apparently said that carrying content is like a postman having to carry heavy parcels, so they cost more to post.

Let’s put aside the fact that heavy parcels are carried in vans for now, so as not to disabuse BT too soon.

Let’s look at some alternatives – some of which are bound to feature at some point in the future.

• Do department stores pay extra for the cost of pavements, due to the extra damage caused by so many people walking in and out of their doors?

• Should popular tourist destinations fund the roads and railways that people use to visit them?

• Should companies that rent that top floors of skyscrapers pay extra for the upkeep of the lifts?

Honestly. Roll up, roll up and pick your analogy – there is one to suit every nuance of the argument.

BT says that popular sites with hungry content cost ISPs more to provide the necessary bandwidth. Hogwash. The bandwidth already exists, and broadband users are simply choosing what they want to use it for. If you switch off the iPlayer, precisely the same amount of bandwidth will still be in existence as was before, just not so much of it will be used.

BT has rightly been given credit for helping the spread of Broadband Britain, but it had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the internet age. Before former chief executive Ben Verwaayen came on board, the telco – and most ISPs – were resisting investment in broadband rollout, saying there was no content that justified it.

As has since been proven, broadband networks are very much a case of “if you build it, they will come.”

And ISPs cannot have one law for others and another for them. Strange how they always manage to find a justification for the fact that nobody actually gets to use the advertised bandwidth on their services anyway – don’t they love the words “up to”.

Broadband has been a huge money-spinner for ISPs, BT included (well, perhaps not Tiscali). The only reason they have made so much money is because web sites offer exciting content that consumers want to access, so they have to buy broadband connections.

If the BBC and others come up with great content ideas, more people will want to use the internet, more people will want to rent broadband lines, and ISPs make more money.

Perhaps the BBC should ask BT to help fund the iPlayer, given that so many broadband customers have opted to purchase BT’s services to access the site?

Bing? Insert “or” after the B

I’ve had a brief play with Bing today, Microsoft’s newly-rebranded homage to Chandler from Friends, and I can’t honestly say I see myself changing my search engine habits.

Already, there is no shortage of reviews of the site that go into far more detail than I have done, and have tested and compared a range of different search terms to see if Bing out-Googles Google.

And perhaps, for some people, reading one of those reviews, or conducting your own personal tests on subjects dear to your online hearts, may cause a personal Damascene conversion from whichever search tool you currently prefer.

But frankly, I doubt it will do so for many people.

Microsoft’s problem is that search is no longer a technical thing – in fact, by definition, it is the exact opposite.

The vast majority of web users are not techies or geeks or even IT hobbyists, they are ordinary people who use a search engine – and primarily that means Google – because it takes all the complexity out of using the internet.

You can explain all the technical and presentational reasons why Bing might be better than Google, as Microsoft no doubt will, and you can try rebranding the whole shebang (shebing?) as a “decision engine” rather than a search engine, as Microsoft has done – but most people just won’t care.

Microsoft is not competing with Google here, it is competing with two mighty foes who have been strong friends of Redmond-developed software for many years – inertia and habit.

Most people who have Google as their home page are about as likely to switch elsewhere as they would change from Coke to Pepsi. Died-in-the-wool Tory voters won’t change to Labour even if their MP personally invoiced them for his duck house. If the only car you have ever driven is a Ford, you won’t be buying Renault any time soon (and certainly not GM).

Google is just too much an easy part of the average – and by “average” I mean “not an IT expert” – user’s web habits, and few will be that bothered. For them, it’s not Bing, but Boring.

There is still only one way Microsoft can seriously challenge Google in search – they tried it once, the rumours won’t go away, and you can bet it’s still on the cards one day – and that is to merge Bing with Yahoo search.

Here come the Waves – not starring Bing

There will be plenty written in the next few weeks about Bing – the re-named, re-developed Microsoft search engine that Redmond hopes might, just, finally, allow it to grab back some of Google’s market share and web advertising clout.

Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but at the end of the day, it’s just a search engine. SO last phase of the internet.

The irony is that while Microsoft is effectively proving to the world that it is playing catch-up – even if there may be a few technological innovations in Bing – Google, meanwhile, is presenting a convincing vision of the next big thing on the web.

Two big announcements from this week’s Google Developer Conference show that the company appears to be well ahead of Microsoft in its thinking.

First, Google demonstrated how it plans to use HTML 5 – the new version of the ubiquitous web development language that is aimed at allowing the creation of browser-based applications that rival operating-system based software for functionality and usability.

As the web becomes the way that consumers and business use technology, so it makes sense to develop your applications for a browser rather than a complex, hardware-bound environment like, ooh, Windows for example.

Next comes Google Wave, a tool that has been created to answer the question: “What would email look like if we set out to invent it today?" according to Google software engineering manager Lars Rasmussen. 

If you want more technical details, I will happily defer to the excellent Tim O’Reilly in his blog entry here, but in essence Google Wave is about redesigning our everyday communication and collaboration tools, such as email and instant messaging, for a future in the cloud.

Wave allows developers to build applications for real-time collaboration and interaction. It claims to try to mimic the way we interact face to face. And it brings together every major internet and technology trend, from cloud to social media to wikis to email and more, into a coherent, managed, human-oriented concept.

Let’s face it, at no time in the history of IT has software been developed with the way people naturally interact in mind – we have had to learn the ways to interact with software based upon the technological constraints of the time.

I can’t honestly say I’ve been excited about the emergence of a new search engine, and particularly a new search brand, at any time in my IT career.

But the vision that Google is this week presenting of a new model of software applications oriented around the web and around real-time real life, is the first time I’ve been vaguely excited by a new technology for a while.

It’s also a vision that doesn’t need PCs or bloated operating systems, doesn’t need hefty software development environments, and bypasses the need for complex PC-based applications. In short, a vision that doesn’t need what Microsoft has been so good at for the past 30 years.

Microsoft is going Bing, but if it doesn’t open its eyes it might one day soon be going bang.

* Obscure blog title reference explained here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036912/

Rebuilding trust in politics and business

You go on holiday for two weeks, and what happens.

The UK political system erupts into crisis over dodgy expense claims. Chancellor Alistair Darling releases his latest attempt to reform the dodgy banking system. And then today, a press release arrives about some Ernst & Young research that claims half of Europe’s company employees think some forms of unethical business behaviour are acceptable practice.

One way or another, trust and ethics in business and politics have taken a battering like never before over the past few months.

And of course, you know that for IT leaders, it’s all going to lead to more work.

Trust is going to be one of the most critical issues in the public relationship with government and companies in the coming years, as bruised and battered MPs and chief executives look to rebuild relationships with citizens and customers.

The inevitable reaction will initially be to impose new controls to monitor, identify and report on unethical or untrustworthy behaviour – think of real-time business intelligence on MPs’ expenses or banks’ credit lines and you get the drift.

It won’t be the first time this has happened, of course. In the US, the much-criticised Sarbanes-Oxley Act was brought in to prevent another Enron. Not only was it widely blamed for pushing international firms out of the US and in to London and other stock exchanges, it was seen as a massive bureaucratic overhead.

There’s every chance that you ain’t seen nothing yet, as the slow pull out of recession continues.

IT leaders today face a choice: Sit back and wait for new controls to be brought in, then reactively try to shoehorn them in to your plans; or act now, and champion the sort of IT-enabled governance in private and public sectors that would allow your employer to prove its trustworthy credentials ahead of the game.

It’s an opportune time for IT to show yet another way it can help to lead organisations out of the downturn, and back to a position of trust.

Tory IT plans need serious scrutiny

I don’t want to get party political, but if David Cameron’s aims for saving money by cancelling government IT projects are anything to go by, voters need to scrutinise Tory plans for cost cuts elsewhere to test their veracity.

 

Cameron told his party’s Spring Forum yesterday that, as part of his plans to cut public spending, he would: “Scrap the ID cards scheme. Cancel the ContactPoint database,” and highlighted “over twelve billion wasted on the NHS computer.”

 

Good, populist, vote-winning statements for the party faithful, of course. And not the first time those three IT projects have been singled out by the Opposition for special attention if they were to win the next General Election. Previously though, the objections have been mainly political, not financial.

 

Politically, there is always a case to be made.

 

Financially, as a way to cut public spending, the argument doesn’t stack up so well.

 

With ID cards – much of the project is going towards overhauling the passport system and introducing biometric passports, which is an international obligation. And at some point, a government of any hue has to tackle the problem of electronic identity management. So we might not have ID cards, but it would not save much cash.

 

ContactPoint, the controversial children’s database, is already live. Not much to be saved there apart from a few maintenance and service fees.

 

And as its critics are loath to acknowledge, £12bn is not being wasted on “the NHS computer”. That figure covers a range of projects, many of which are already complete and successful, and none of that cash is being spent until working systems are delivered, so it’s hardly going to waste.

 

Cameron also said: “One part of it is the electronic patient records system - a central state-run database designed to let GPs, hospital doctors and nurses share your medical notes. Now I want you to imagine how we’d have gone about it, if we’d had the chance. We would have said: today, you don’t need a massive central computer to do this.”

 

Erm, there isn’t going to be a massive central computer to do this. Every NHS region will have its own system, linked together by the NHS Spine.

 

“A web-based version of the government’s bureaucratic scheme, services like Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault, cost virtually nothing to run” said Cameron.

 

Now come on, can you honestly see anyone being happy with Microsoft or Google being given the go-ahead to store our most sensitive personal medical records? Privacy campaigners would have a field day. Or that either provider would house 60 million UK records for "virtually nothing"? And besides, those services are designed for a very different US healthcare system.

 

Now I’m not standing up for Labour here – far from it. Their record of IT spending certainly deserves the closest scrutiny. It's hard to single out the Tories without sounding party political, but that's not my point.

 

My concern is that if the Tories think that scrapping a couple of politically-controversial IT systems and asking Microsoft to store our health records is central to their plans to save the economy, then such naivety deserves being seriously questioned.