Blogger Robert Scoble has posted a message on his FriendFeed account, hinting at a Microsoft announcement next Monday, related to Google's OS.In the posting, Scoble notes "why did Google announce Chrome OS this week? Well, of course, Microsoft has a big announcement coming on Monday (I'm embargoed)". Neowin confirmed last week that Microsoft will announce that Windows 7 has hit RTM on Monday at the Worldwide Partner Conference that is taking place in New Orleans. Could Scoble be confirming this too or hinting at Microsoft's forthcoming Gazelle browser? Blogger Imran Hussain thinks it could be Gazelle too. Long Zheng thinks it could be Office Web.
Gazelle Browser
Microsoft has been developing "Gazelle" as an alternative to Internet Explorer. The browser acts like a self-contained operating system and is designed to address the fact that browsers like IE and Chrome have not been built by design to handle multiple processes and web applications in a secure manner. The implications from this is that older browsers have suffered performance and security issues.
The browser relies on a "browser kernel" (5,000 lines of C# code) that helps enforce security rules to prevent malicious access to the PC's underlying operating system. Built by the Microsoft Research team, company officials have been dropping hints that they are ready to talk more about Gazelle recently, we first heard about Gazelle back in February in a MS research blog posting. This week, Microsoft researcher Helen Wang spoke with CNET News and said "I think Gazelle marks a significant departure from all previous browsers, including Chrome and IE 8". Wang also noted "we're really trying to leverage the decades of operating system experience and apply that in the Web and browser setting".
In August, Microsoft Research's Security and Privacy Research Group lead by Wang will be presenting a research paper (PDF) at USENIX on their experimental web-browser. It's possible that Microsoft has brought forward the presentation to next Monday due to Google's recent OS announcement, but not likely.
Office Web Applications
In Scoble's FriendFeed he replies to others by hinting "part of the Microsoft announcement on Monday runs on Google Chrome (and Firefox for that matter)" meaning this could be a web service. Microsoft evangelist Keith Coombs posted on twitter that he was playing with some "secret Microsoft software" which he couldn't talk about until the end of the week. If it's the grand Office Web Apps unveiling this makes sense at a Partner Conference. Microsoft hinted at its Office Web Applications back at it's professional developers conference last year. The company plans to offer Office in a way that is similar to Google Apps/Docs. This is the more likely option out of the two.
Thanks to member Dead_Monkey for the news tip
Has nothing to do with its current performance though, if that is indeed what this is about.
I mentioned the paper because billyea was feeling Gazelle would be slow by design, simply because it's coded in C#. I didn't imply my POV, simply because opinions don't matter at this point as the browser is still under heavy development.
Again, if you read the paper, you'd realize there's a comparison of performance (page load latency, memory overhead, responsiveness, process creation) between the current IE monolithic kernel and the new BK introduced in Gazelle.
The paper would have to be based on quite old things if Microsoft intends to announce Gazelle next week. It's interesting stuff, but it definitely doesn't sound unveiling/production ready.
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
That's "guys".
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
That's "guys".
Wow... You must be new on teh internetz
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
That's "guys".
Wow... You must be new on teh internetz
Leet speak is not encouraged in Neowin.
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
That's "guys".
Wow... You must be new on teh internetz
Leet speak is not encouraged in Neowin.
Last time I checked, internet was free of rules.
But yes, most people here speak coherent English. Give it a try you might like it.
There's 14. That's not really a bunch.
I am Mac and I am PC, oh, hay guise, I am Chrome.
That's "guys".
Wow... You must be new on teh internetz
Leet speak is not encouraged in Neowin.
Last time I checked, internet was free of rules.
You check something thats not really there?
FYI "Leet" speak was a childish fad that died a decade ago.
FYI "Leet" speak was a childish fad that died a decade ago.
Too bad that it's not leet speak. Also, too bad that I don't care what died years ago. Not sure if this is a shock for some of you, but minority of people actually do what they want to.
As for adult thing, yet again, you think so because society dictates you the rules.
FYI "Leet" speak was a childish fad that died a decade ago.
Too bad that it's not leet speak. Also, too bad that I don't care what died years ago. Not sure if this is a shock for some of you, but minority of people actually do what they want to.
As for adult thing, yet again, you think so because society dictates you the rules.
You're free to do what you want outside of Neowin. But if you want to be part of this community you need to follow the rules. No one forces you to come here anyway.
Yes I hope so too.
I think Microsoft should consider again switching to WebKit for their rendering engine.
If this other browser project performs like they say and is built with solid security in mind, that plus the security changes in Windows they've added knock out one of the biggest problems MS has to face.
That just leaves security holes in other apps or other parts of the OS to think of, and if some 3rd party app has the problem, well, you can't actually blame MS for that one.
"find something else to knock IE for"
What's about this stance anyway? I hear it so frequently. It's like we're nitpicking about toolbars in IE moving 10 pixels to the left in IE 8.0 or whatever, just to have something to complain about. It's ridiculous. Lacking standard compliance and e.g. SVG support (just to pick one major feature lacking in IE but all other browsing having) is a big downside for web developers trying to develop web services for IE. It's not like we're looking for things to nitpick about.
Come again when the arguments have boiled down to IE correcting misspelled words wrong in a new spellchecking feature.
What's about this stance anyway? I hear it so frequently. It's like we're nitpicking about toolbars in IE moving 10 pixels to the left in IE 8.0 or whatever, just to have something to complain about. It's ridiculous. Lacking standard compliance and e.g. SVG support (just to pick one major feature lacking in IE but all other browsing having) is a big downside for web developers trying to develop web services for IE. It's not like we're looking for things to nitpick about.
Come again when the arguments have boiled down to IE correcting misspelled words wrong in a new spellchecking feature.
Right, so even when those are added you're saying you wouldn't find something else wrong with it at all? People who don't care much for standards or SVG support knock it for other things, and yes UI is one. Are you forgetting the whole debate about the placement of the Refresh and Stop buttons being after the address bar? Honestly, people DO nitpick it to hell and back.
Ah well, let's freeze all software development altogether, since people will always find something wrong despite any other improvement.
What's about this stance anyway? I hear it so frequently. It's like we're nitpicking about toolbars in IE moving 10 pixels to the left in IE 8.0 or whatever, just to have something to complain about. It's ridiculous. Lacking standard compliance and e.g. SVG support (just to pick one major feature lacking in IE but all other browsing having) is a big downside for web developers trying to develop web services for IE. It's not like we're looking for things to nitpick about.
Come again when the arguments have boiled down to IE correcting misspelled words wrong in a new spellchecking feature.
Right, so even when those are added you're saying you wouldn't find something else wrong with it at all? People who don't care much for standards or SVG support knock it for other things, and yes UI is one. Are you forgetting the whole debate about the placement of the Refresh and Stop buttons being after the address bar? Honestly, people DO nitpick it to hell and back.
So you're assuming I am "people" who would complain about toolbar buttons, if I'm thinking huge things like standard compliance are lacking? You're talking of two completely different things here, with a difference on the order of a magnitude in importance to fix. Stop assuming things about people, that's the first thing you should do. Don't package everyone who dislike IE in the same group and put a label "whiners" on it. The reality isn't that simple at all. Sure, there are whiners, but there are many reasons to dislike both IE and Firefox, or what have you, some reasons more valid than others.
To answer your question, no, I wouldn't start whining about stuff on a toolbar or perhaps how an icon looks if they caught up with the competition elsewhere.
Heck, I don't even use IE, I'm just annoyed by this because it holds back the evolution in web services unnecessarily. It's particularly annoying when the rest of the market is already there in many respects, but MS is in typical fashion not catching up and instead going "horray" and jumping with joy when they finally get CSS-fricking-2 support.
Last edited by Jugalator on 08 Jul 2009 - 11:39
Gazelle isn't about rebuilding the rendering engine, it's about a more secure browser platform...
You don't know Wikipedia?
BTW, gee websites don't support SVG? I wonder what might be the cause for that.
What's about this stance anyway? I hear it so frequently. It's like we're nitpicking about toolbars in IE moving 10 pixels to the left in IE 8.0 or whatever, just to have something to complain about. It's ridiculous. Lacking standard compliance and e.g. SVG support (just to pick one major feature lacking in IE but all other browsing having) is a big downside for web developers trying to develop web services for IE. It's not like we're looking for things to nitpick about.
Come again when the arguments have boiled down to IE correcting misspelled words wrong in a new spellchecking feature.
That will never stop the MS haters from criticising whatever MS does
If you're right, good on you. If not, well...
Just because a source is anonymous, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If you're right, good on you. If not, well...
Sometimes you can't name the source because they like keeping their identity a secret due to various reasons.
You know, because they are a super hero or something LOL.
Mild mannered anonymous source.
So far they've not been attacking the OS part head on - they better come with something 10 times better than Windows 7 if they REALLY want to get peoples attention. People are not going to forget or stop using Windows overnight..let's see if they can parlay all the money over 10-15 years because I don't see anything happening (if at all) before then.
Microsoft should be quivering in their boots at this news :-)
Microsoft should be quivering in their boots at this news :-)
And Linux as a whole, Ubuntu included, is still less than 1% market share.
Chrome is going to be built on Linux. That is a fatal flaw, because of the sheer difficulty in installing desired applications, even on Ubuntu. Regardless, Google has proven in the past to not really care about data security (i.e. having their own hands in user data).
Personally, if success means coming anywhere close to challenging Microsoft, then I do not see ChromeOS succeeding. I would love to have an alternative to Windows, but Linux-based OS's, even Ubuntu, are too clunky for general use, I refuse to spend a huge premium on Apple hardware to get OS X, and I will never put my data at risk by subjecting it to big brother Google.
Our only hope is if Steve Jobs takes his head out of his butt and finally unleashes OS X as a standalone OS for PC's. The commercial of Mac turning PC into a Mac would be priceless.
I haven't seen any indication that Google has any intention of letting anyone install any applications outside of those delivered by Google on these systems. They want all the applications to be delivered through the browser, not platform-native.
Yet another Pyhrric victory for Linux, a vendor taking the kernel and leaving the community behind.
Being built on Linux (you know, the kernel) is completely unrelated to how apps would be installed on this Google OS thing (or on any other Linux distro, for that matter).
Not only would that make a hilarious commercial, it would be the first Apple product I'd buy post-ROJ.
(Edited by Beaurau of Redundancy Department)
Last edited by GreyWolfSC on 08 Jul 2009 - 18:38
Microsoft should be quivering in their boots at this news :-)
In order to beat #1, you have to beat #2. They gotta replace Mac OS as the #2 OS before they take on MS, just as Bing must unseat Yahoo! as the #2 search provider before it can take on Google.
Last edited by lordcanti86 on 09 Jul 2009 - 03:08
(Edited by Beaurau of Redundancy Department)
It would never happen because that would nuke Apple's Mac division profits (they make almost nothing on the OS).
They could survive on the iPod if they really wanted to. And Microsoft runs solely on its OS usually.
But with .net MS can do great things : See worldwide telescope ! So I'm pleased to see that with it's upcoming browser, MS is finally pushing this technology forward.
Current OS (say its Windows or mac or linux ) they have there foot prints in enterprise, home, business etc...
OS needs Lot of hardware support from USB to high end factories...
Not sure whether this will gain market share..but rather its a very long way to go since Windows / Unix /linux system are stabilized & 100% dependent now for anything related to computer.
(See link "Google's OS" at the top of the article.)
Save to Office Live Workspace (Within Office 2007)
Open from Office Live Workspace (Within Office 2007)
Read Documents from Office Live Workspace (Within Browser)
Now All they need to add is the ability to write documents from within the website. The website is also currently in beta and maybe they are going to announce that they are removing the beta tags.
Personally I would like it if Bing had a mail button in one of the tabs rather than a "Windows Live" Tab. And then from there I could go to the Office live workspace from Mail like I can easily with Gmail.
I would join in with you if it weren't for Google's strong brand.
It's not Windows so it shouldn't really be a problem, even in the EU
So my point is; even if Google come out with this amazing, "free" Operating System that is awesome on all kinds of levels and sets a definate challenge to MS and Apple - it will never ever break the sheer commercial clout that Microsoft and Apple have. And therefore, Windows will always do well and Apple will always do well (with schoolkids).
Saying that though, I'm all for greater competition - i'm a Windows user through and through - and yes I've played with Ubuntu and a couple of the other Linux distros and yet I always come back to Windows. I'm curious to see what MS have up their sleeves on Monday. Aside from what we're all guessing here I have a feeling they might have an announcement we arent expecting.
MAYBE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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