There's lots of Google Chrome OS buzz around the Web today, much like what we saw 9 months ago when Google Chrome browser was announced. The headlines are, predictably sensational.
I have a question though. When all the hype has blown over, how will we know if Google Chrome OS is a success? What's the measure? What kind of penetration do we expect in the next few years?
With the Google Chrome browser there was an awful lot of speculation that it would destroy Firefox (or IE) in no time at all. We're more than 9 months out from that hype and the Chrome Browser has destroyed nether Firefox nor IE and has only just beaten out Opera in terms of usage share with about 2% of the global browsing market.
So what is success in Google's new "war" with Microsoft? I'd like to offer a measure of success that's at least somewhat rooted in reality.
If Google Chrome OS has 2% of OS usage three years from now, I think it will be safe to say it's been "wildly successful."
What follows is some back of the napkin math, some educated guesses, and some wild speculation that led me to that 2% figure.
Here's my thinking. Google has stated that they're targeting netbooks first. 2008 saw about 10 million netbooks sold. Considering the ongoing global recession, 2009 will probably see that double to 20 million sold. Let's imagine that it grows to 30 million in 2010, 40 million in 2011 and 50 million in 2012. This is wild speculation, and I suspect it's on the high side, but I'm trying to imagine the best possible landscape for Google Chrome OS.
So, from the time Google gets into this market, a year from now, through their first two years of Google Chrome OS distribution, there would be approximately 85 million netbooks sold. What percentage of that do I think Google will represent? Well, that's a difficult question to answer but I think a generous guess would be that they could take 1/3rd, or just over 28 million in sales away from Microsoft. That's kind of an ugly number, though, so I'm going to round it up to an even 30 million.
The installed base of Web-connected computers is about 1.2 billion and if growth continues at about the same pace, it will be about 1.5 billion by the summer of 2012. (See this post for more on that number.)
And we do the math. 30 million divided by 1.5 billion gives us 2%.
If Google does everything right with their Chrome OS and they manage to acquire a full third of netbook sales in their first two years, then we'd see Chrome OS represent about 2% of Web-connected computers by the summer of 2012.
If you accept that, then you sort of have to admit that the headlines around the Web today are pretty over the top.
This goes to a larger point, I think. New markets on the Web can emerge an grow really quickly. There's lots of opportunity for something like Facebook to take over in just a few years. But that's not really the case for PCs and desktop software. The installed base is just really, really large, and the growth and upgrade cycle are much much slower than with Web services.
Firefox has been the most successful piece of desktop software to ever challenge Microsoft's offering. We started the effort 10 years ago and finally arrived at a successful product 5 years ago and in the 5 years since we shipped that product, we've managed to gain about 300 million users and a quarter of Web browsing usage.
Apple has been the most successful operating system to challenge Microsoft ever and they've managed in the 8+ years of OS X availability to grab only about 5% of the global OS installed base.
It's just not fast or easy to move a market that's more than a billion large. Anyone that thinks that major change can happen in months, or even a couple of years, doesn't understand this space very well.
