I don’t think, that Google is fighting a battle there. It’s more like throwing propaganda flyers from a plane over an enemy city. And it works. It’s not like ten years ago, when some Nerd told you that Emacs, Latex and a few hunderd Keyboard-Shortcuts are better than Word. Employees know Gmail and Google Docs from their private life. And you have a hard time explaining them, why they should use some UI-Disaster, 90ies Application at Work, especially at Work, while they can use easier, more advanced Applications, for free and everywhere.

If Google manages to attract only a few alphageeks for their Google-OS-Gadget, they have another disruptive, convincing and selfreplicating effect on their other products.

1. “You have to understand and trust the concept of storing your digital stuff on somebody else’s servers.” Actually you don’t have to. You may also save all the stuff on your own Webspace. With CMSes like WordPress and Drupal getting more and more powerfull, and with sinken Webspace prices (I got 75 GB now for 10 bucks a month), this might become more easily for more and more people.

2. After all I’ve read, I wouldn’t consider Chrome OS as yet another OS. And Windows and OS X are not the Competitors. I think it should be better compared to Amazons Kindle or Apples Iphone. It’s a pure Browser-Gadget.

3. I’m pretty convinced right now, that Google is ONLY following long-term Goals. They realized the size and the impact of the “Medienwandel” (“Media Shift”?). All they have done lately, Chrome, Wave, Contacts, Profiles; all the improvementes they have made in the last two year are not aiming for “the next big thing” but for a constant, consistent development.

I once used the Metaphor a A380 over Hamburg, approaching for landing … because of it’s size, it seems unrealistically slow. I looks like it has to fall from the sky like a stone. But actually it isn’t. It isn’t at all.