Google (GOOG) has been very busy this past year. Wave, the online email, instant messenger and collaboration tool was only unveiled a few weeks ago. A few months prior to the Wave announcement, Google launched the web browser Chrome, which according to the company has been downloaded more than 35 million times since inception. Now the leader in on-line searches has surprised the market again with confirmation it is to launch a brand new operating system late in 2010, currently described as Chrome OS. The development of such a strategically important product does not pass through the planning stage overnight, so to successfully ambush both investors and industry insiders so late in the development stage is no small feat.
The Chrome OS proposition will tackle Microsoft’s (MSFT) monopolistic Windows operating system head on, which has to be good news for the consumer who has felt increasingly locked into Microsoft’s not-so-subtle business model which forces consumers to adopt the next painfully inevitable revision of Windows. This inconveniently seems to make even recent hardware purchases, such as laptops, painfully slow, quirky and semi-redundant in the short-term and unworkable without Microsoft upgrades, not long after.
Google stock was an obvious short some weeks ago at $439.72 and we highlighted it as such. It’s now time to close those shorts, take the easy profit, and await further news from Google and closely monitor market-wide risk appetite which may be bottoming out, at least in the short term.
