Chrome OS, WebOS, Microsoft's OS Competition in 2012

Melanie Gross
Jun 3, 2011
Updated • Mar 19, 2015
Microsoft
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We may still be at least a year away from Windows 8's big debut in 2012, but the OS arena is heating up like never before, and new competitors are stepping up to the plate.

It's no big secret that Google has been preparing a streamlined, Chrome-esque operating system to challenge Microsoft's double decade monopoly. They claim it will be faster, more powerful, and less expensive (read: free) than anything Microsoft has ever put out. Most interesting of all, it appears Google is prepared to fight a two front war: first, with its open source Chromium OS, downloadable by individuals for any use, and second, Chrome OS, to be shipped on-board select tablets and mobile devices.

Attacking the PC market is a serious undertaking, but Microsoft has been working very hard lately to become more competitive in the handheld realm. They are gaining ground on Apple and are holding back Android, so surely things are looking up for them, right?

That might have been true a few days ago, before HP announced its plans to expand usage of its lightweight operating system, webOS. In the past the company had limited the operating system's applications to its own products. Soon things may be very different, in ways that don't well suit Microsoft's interests.

In an interview with Reuters, HP CEO Leo Apotheker let slip that “it’s not correct to believe that [webOS] should only be on HP devices.” And the company seems to believe him. Rumor has it that a fresh batch of PCs will roll off the HP assembly line with the operating system dual-booting alongside Windows.

Ok, so HP has plans to start pushing its OS against those of others, namely Microsoft. So what?

For starters, webOS is widely respected for combining the three golden words of contemporary tech: cloud, social, and mobile. While Windows may have been the gold standard of the past, it hasn't made strong moves toward cloud computing (although we will see what happens when 8 actually comes out). The future of social media sits on the cloud, and many aspects of mobile usage rely on consumers' love of social media.

Keep in mind that HP isn't even the main challenger. Google owns mobile, is moving toward cloud and is getting pretty chummy with social giants like Facebook after failing to put up a challenger to face them. Apple is holding onto its piece of the pie, and tablet and netbook manufacturers are still interested in the prospects of linux-based operating systems.

So where does all this leave Microsoft and their upcoming Windows 8? Desperately trying to find its place in an evolving tech world. Things were so much more simple when they were just the great big bad guy...

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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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