DarkStealth

Google Drops a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft. And It's Made of Chrome.

This only seems useful for the Netbook market, and even then, it's not clear that's a good trade for people. Windows is so successful because of network effects - your PC running Windows is more valuable because your friends run it and you use it both at work & home. You reuse learning on one device & it applies to all. And your same applications work everywhere. Providing what they're branding as an operating system will leave their users without some of the network effect. True, maybe you can run some applications in a web browser, but many of them are imperfect substitutes for Microsoft Office.

It's surprising that Google is branding Linux + a window manager as an operating system. And of course, it's a downgrade for people that already have a PC or laptop. (Gotta play my games...)

Does Google really think they can make money this way, or is this just to spoil Microsoft's revenue from Netbooks?

Microsoft Becomes Just Another Company

Microsoft will use this money to essentially play the currency market. With 60% of revenue from overseas, I believe the company wants to keep more cash in local markets around the world, or at least not in the US dollar. (Maybe this is a tax dodge instead of a hedge against the US dollar - I'm not sure.) But most of their costs are in US dollars - they just wanted access to really cheap dollars to give them more flexibility.

Also, they are very likely to be buying back MSFT stock.