This analysis is sorely lacking perspective. I could pick on a bunch of things but I'll just choose one to make my point. Cringely's assertion that Google should fear making Google search not work on Windows PCs is ludicrous. Period. Anyone who seriously thinks any broadly successful (public) company would pull a stunt like that and piss off the vast bulk of their users has lost touch with reality.
Not even the PR implications, but just the security/technical. How does an OS vendor block access to a website? Deny it in the hosts file? Add a default firewall rule? Code a special case in IE? Any such incident would cause irrevocable damage with any government/enterprise and push them to abandon the platform entirely. As you say, it's just absurd.
Re: Cringely: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me
#21Let me see... how about not supporting HTML5? That would pretty much kill all of the new Google products for 70% of the PC market... And it's not immediately grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit.