What’s a poor media mogul to do? Well, how about getting behind a new platform? Say one of those cheapie netbooks running an OS we don’t have to pay for, like, say, Google Chrome OS? … Which would you want? A netbook running Windows XP for $400 or a netbook running Chrome with every episode of Lost, you favorite newspapers and magazines for $100 and by the way a monthly subscription fee?

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Okay, cool. And now Michael Arrington is masturbating over himself:

It’s hard to type a blog post when one hand is being used to pat myself on the back.Last year I wrote a post about the just launched Chrome browser titled Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer.

Congrats, Michael. I guess.

Google OS is in fact an operating system. It runs hardware management off the Linux kernel and its application platform is the browser (Google Chrome). For Windows the application layer is the desktop, with the browser as another application offering but not the platform that all other applications are built off.

That difference is why I don’t think Google OS is going to be the Microsoft killer of Arrington’s fantasies, at least in the short- to medium-term, and by the long-term Microsoft will have an answer. Certainly, it will open up other opportunities for online computer usage, and it may open up “the cloud” to a more mainstream audience. But online and “the cloud” is only part of what computers are used for. What about games, business applications, embedded applications, simulations, and so on?

One issue I see is that web technology is not yet equal to desktop technology. It’s headed that direction, and great strides have been made in all verticals of web tech in the last decade, but web-based application development presents its own unique challenges that desktop application development has long since resolved. If you strip away the application platform of today and replace it with a browser so that you’re forced to work within a web-based framework, then you’re reintroducing challenges application developers have to now re-address.

For example, Google Apps, which Arrington addresses:

Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss office. Chrome plus Gears plus Google Wave plus HTML 5 and web platforms like Flash and Silverlight all combine into a single wonderful computing device. The Internet Is Everything. All the OS has to do is boot the damn computer, get me to a browser as fast as possible and then stay the hell out of the way.

How many people actually use Google Apps for their productivity applications instead of Microsoft Office (or an open source alternative)? It would be nice to see that stat, but nobody I personally know uses Google Apps for their regular document editing needs. Why not? Because it sucks. Response is slow, features are limited, and it’s in a browser.

Even if the browser is the operating system, Google Apps is not at the level of Microsoft Office. For example, I always have issues with Google Apps when formatting my document. I don’t actually know how it really looks until I make it a PDF, since there’s always a variation between the edit view of the document and the printed view. I don’t have that problem with Office.

Don’t get me wrong: Google OS is an exciting announcement that will open up another vertical in the OS market, but it isn’t a replacement for the traditional desktop OS platform. There are issues with a browser-based OS that desktop OS’s simply provide better solutions for, and for that reason Google OS will not be for everyone. ReadWriteWeb posted 10 Things We’re Dying to Know about Chrome OS that is an example of some of the challenges a browser-based OS faces. Like I said, some of these things the desktop OS is simply better at performing.

But of course with announcements like these people like Michael Arrington have to do the masturbatory dance. It keeps their egos (and paychecks) growing. I just advise against being sucked into the hype.

What's inspiring to me and that I think we can take away from the nomination battle is not that he won, but how he won. As the Washington Post points out, Obama's strategy was focused on winning delegates, not states, and his campaign was meticulously well organized from the top down. Clinton was simply out-managed, out-organized, and out-campaigned.

The key lesson from his strategy is simple: nail the details. Barack Obama won the nomination because he nailed the details. His strategy focused on the lowest common denominator of the point system: the delegates. His organization focused on the lowest common denominator of an election: the individual. And when it came to the candidate himself, he was so disciplined that he maintained a consistent message for 17 months.

I recently discussed how success is directly related to one's ability to "nail the details". The sports teams who are disciplined enough to focus on and execute every moment of the game are the teams that win championships. Obama won the nomination because his campaign was disciplined enough to focus on the smallest details for 17 months.

In software, we can be successful in building quality products our customers love if we are disciplined enough to nail the details of design, usability, and quality. Doing so doesn’t require lots of process or management, but rather it means our mindset is to focus on creating value for the customer and ensuring that value is provided throughout the product’s development. Some like to call it “polish”, but it’s really about ensuring every detail has been addressed.

This is why creating products customers love is so difficult. This is why doing anything successful is so difficult. But you don’t have to tell Barack Obama that. His ability to nail the details earned him a place in history.