Very Interesting, Indeed

I was speaking with a friend a day or two ago about why, despite their shortcomings, I love companies like Olympus[olympusamerica.com] and Tesla[teslamotors.com]. It basically boils down to the shared aspects of their research and development philosophies, which (to paraphrase) is: “you have to tear it down to build it up”. Both of these companies were faced with a powerful emerging technology for their market – Olympus with the move to digital photography and Tesla with the shift to marketable electric cars. Both companies embraced the opportunity to maximize the advantages offered by the new technology at the expense of decades of previous R&D work. By refusing to be beholden to their film camera bodies, Olympus forged an all-digital product line, using digital technology in ways that their competitors simply couldn’t while still building lenses that had to be compatible with both digital and film cameras. While every other car company struggled to develop electrical motors that they could ’slot’ into 80+ years of gasoline-powered vehicle R&D, Tesla developed electrical cars – everything being built for the inherent advantages of an electrical power source. Both of these examples represented huge risks. And although the companies may not have garnered returns that strictly justified those risks, someone did reap the rewards: the customers. We got better products, designed with the present in mind, with room to grow. That is why I choose to support these companies with my dollars when I can.

It’s for this reason that I’ve been a strong proponent of Google’s Chrome Browser[google.com] since the Windows version went public beta last September. If you look at the goals Google had for this project – rebuilding the web browser from the ground up for today’s internet environment of embedded video and applications – you will see a philosophy they share with Tesla and Olympus. The improvements in Chrome’s user interface are such that after growing accustomed to browsing in Chrome, I found it hard to go back to other browsers. I’ve been hoping that this kind of design philosophy would be embraced and brought to other computer applications.

Apparently, Google has heard my cries[googleblog.blogspot.com], cause they’ve just announced a Google Chrome OS targeted at netbooks (although it will run on regular desktops too). I run both OS X and Windows at home – for different tasks – and I’ll not be dropping either any time soon, but I’m super-interested to see what this style of ‘tear it down to build it up’ design philosophy can bring to an OS.