For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

Are you suggesting that Chinese will buy an iPad to do their computing?

Exactly, all this is is marketing, yet a lot of the commenters here have been swept up in it.

I'm sure Windows 8 will be a huge improvement over iOS5. It has to be to adhere to corporate needs. No large buiness is going to want to put anything in Apple's datacenters, and iOS5 will not allow any type of serious adminitstration or configuration, or it would threaten what Apple is trying to build. i.e. iOS5 comes in any color you like, as long as it's black or white.

When Win8 is released, it will be the defacto standard inside Fortune 500s and that's all Microsoft really cares about.

In all of those things I see a "me too!" response to some other product.

Windows Live Gmail services

Azure Amazon AWS / Google AppServ

Sharepoint DropBox / Google {Docs|Groups}

Hotmail Gmail

MSN Music iTunes

But what the Chronicle was pointing out (and others here) is that the iCloud stuff is (if Jobs is accurate) the 'rest' of your UX experience with everything in their product line. For me its the difference between telling all your developers "You can assume that iCloud will be attached to this device" and "add #ifdef (some optional service) other feature."

One is point responses to specific offerings through network services, and the other is retooling your architecture and baking in network connectivity.

Googe Maps vs Streets and Trips was always one of those things, Maps doesn't work if you're not connected to the Internet, S&T does because of its builtin database. As that decision relates to customer facing issues, in the Google case your map is always (nearly) current, in the S&T case you may not know that the freeway extension was completed last year. But Google loses when you can't connect you get slow (Edge) or no maps on your phone, but not a problem for S&T. Google 'bakes in' the assumption that you're on the network.

"Delivering on the vision" requires a vision to exist and be articulated, and then to outline a roadmap of deliverables between now and the time you feel like the vision is 'delivered.' To my way of looking at things that is where Microsoft could do much much better than they have.

[update: fair point on sharepoint, I admit I didn't know it existed until it was offered as an alternative to what Google had to offer. I'm guessing that it was very enterprise targeted early on. ]

Yes, "the cloud" is a vision that Microsoft has proclaimed and never been able to implement. It really required re-thinking the operating system. Microsoft's operating system was just too big and unwieldy to be re-engineered in this way. If Apple truly has pulled it off, a large part of the reason is that their OS was much more malleable and could handle this kind of thing.

But I think iCloud is more than "annoying" to Google. It shows Apple is competing with them head-to-head for cloud customers. And if there are network effects and permanent lock-in, then this is a very, very important battle.

Google really has written an operating system where you can take your data and configuration with you wherever you go. But you have to switch to a new computer and operating system and a completely different way of thinking!

Apple hasn't truly re-written the operating system the way Google has. They have made some important strides to helping people get their most important data into the cloud. Then they announce iCloud, over-hype it, and hope that the reality distortion field does the rest.

The big advantage that iCloud has, though, is Apple can leverage their entire installed user base. Millions of people can begin to use iCloud NOW, for $29! That's orders of magnitude simpler than having to buy a new computer. It's not a complete cloud solution like ChromeOS, but it might be good enough for now. And with Apple, the transition will be gradual and the learning curve will be easy.

So I think Google should be very worried about iCloud...