The web, including the team at FlipCurve, has been abuzz ever since the announcement of Google’s new operating system. Yet most recently, an article has appeared in BusinessWeek that has asked the more subtle question to this massive announcement: “What is Google’s Goal?” The author of the BusinessWeek article, Stephen Wildstrom, suspects that Google’s goal is to have a light weight operating system that is used for content consumption. Games and other processor intensive applications, Mr. Wildstrom contends, will still have to remain on full computers.
Now, he’s probably right. The salable idea behind the use of a lightweight OS is that it provides for content on the go. No longer do you have to take a full laptop when you want to check your e-mail, nor do you have to check it on a small phone screen. Simply open up your netbook and you can view it anywhere, conveniently. However, as good as this sounds, I believe this is providing cover for the real reason why cloud computing is being pushed so heavily.
Piracy concerns have been steadily escalating over the past few years. Movies, games, apps, if you can name it, chances are you can pirate it. Most attempts at preventing piracy have failed. Take a look at DRM if you don’t want to believe me – almost no-one actually likes the thought of DRM and any attempts to make operating systems and hardware support it eventually fall flat on their face. What most people don’t realize is that cloud computing virtually eliminates piracy. And the software manufacturers would like for you to remain in that way of thinking.
Consider an example of probably the most pirated application – Microsoft Word. Now, let’s suppose that cloud computing swings into full effect. Word becomes a rich Web (3.0?) application that feels like the real Word. Better yet, you can access it from any browser, be it on a netbook, desktop, or desktop. You can edit your documents anywhere you have an internet connection. Sounds great doesn’t it? Now, let’s say that Microsoft sets a very reasonable price of $5 per month or $60 per year to use this service. They control access to it via a login for each person. How does one pirate Word now? If you try to login to another person’s account, I’m sure they’ll do a Battle.net type system whereby if two IPs are logged into the same account at the same time it’s banned. Download it off the server? Not possible, in the same way that dynamic PHP-based web sites can’t be downloaded now. The bottom line is that you can’t pirate it in any way because it won’t exist locally.
Games and other processor intensive applications, I suspect will start to be offloaded to custom machines. If cloud computing really takes off, then games for the PC will essentially die. Already we have XNA for the 360 which allows independent developers to make games for the Xbox. For other applications like movie editing, what we might start to see is a blend of cloud computing and local computing. Maybe the actual processor intensive parts (the encoder for example) will be stored locally, with a sort of key/lock mechanism. Only the cloud computing interface can invoke the encoder to do its job. That way all local components are worthless without the subscription cloud components.
Of course, this would also put the final nail in the coffin for physical distribution as everything would be “high in the sky”. There will be no more need for actual software stores (well, maybe except gaming places as I don’t see people being able to regularly download 9 GB game ISOs anytime soon). It’s unknown how cloud computing would work, but what I suspect is that there’ll be some sort of a repository system. You’ll add a repository on Chrome OS and then the applications will appear on your desktop. Some repositories will need a user name and password for subscription content, while others will simply just be the equivalent of freeware. Independent developers would then create their own repository if they were developing software, or they would have the 360, iPhone, PSP, etc. for games.
Cloud computing is significantly more revolutionary than I believe most people realize. A lot are just seeing the features of it and thinking, “wow that’s cool”, without understanding how it will dramatically change the face of computing as we know it today. You will no longer *own* anything. Most likely every software application will be sold as either a subscription or an ad-sponsored app. There will be no local files that you can modify if you wanted, nor will you be able to keep an old version if you like it better. If Microsoft releases a new version of Word to their cloud, you’ll probably have to use it. Of course, the benefits would be that you’d continuously have the latest and greatest, so long as you paid for the subscription. There are many other potential revenue sources of the subscription model, such as “micro-subscriptions”. If you needed to view an Access database, you could pay $1, for example, to use Access for 24 hours.
To conclude, obviously the rampant levels of piracy need to be stopped (there are people out there who have watched hundreds of movies without even paying for a single one of them). Yet, oddly enough, it’s these same people who are likely cheering on cloud computing which will completely remove the ability to have pirated content. Indeed, I truly believe that this concept is one of the most ingenious strategies of all time. Software corporations have finally found a way to finish piracy in a way that is amicable to everybody.
Business Week
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