Google senses blood in the water with the death of Windows XP and sends flowers

While Microsoft continues to run their ‘Scroogled’ campaign which may or may not be working, Google has taken a small shot across the bow of the Redmond based software maker with this post on their Google Enterprise Google+ profile referencing the end of support for Windows XP which comes on the 8th of April.

A small mistake in the post sees the link actually go nowhere, althoug it’s assumed that it’s intended to go to Chromebooks for Enterprise webpage.

But it’s not quite that simple really is it? Windows XP launched in October of 2001, giving the operating system a good 12½ years of usage before Microsoft ended support. ChromeOS on the other hand appears to have a significantly shorter life – at least according to the Google ChromeOS End of Life page which lists End of Life dates for a range of Chromebooks at around the 5-6 year mark:

*Except where noted, these are unofficial End Of Life dates. Official EOL for these models will be at this date or later.
**Officially announced End Of Life date.

It’s all in fun and after the ‘Scroogled’ campaign, you can understand Google wanting to get a shot in, in retaliation. But should they? So far the road Google has taken of ignoring the seemingly desperate campaign and ‘taking the higher road’ has actually been a good thing for them rather than getting into a down and dirty war of words.

The Scroogled campaign has also had the side-effect of leading to more interest in Chromebooks from ‘non-technical’ people who are wondering about what this new product is that Microsoft seems so worried about. And Microsoft SHOULD be worried, with Windows 8/8.1 based laptops not selling as well as they would like and an increasing list of former Windows Laptop manufacturers bringing out ChromeOS based Chromebooks, Chromeboxes and All-In-Ones.

The ChromeOS hardware market is gaining traction – the current top 20 best selling devices in the Computers & Accessories section on Amazon lists three ChromeOS devices – Acer C720, Samsung Series 3 Chromebook and the new Asus Chromebox – and not a single Windows laptop.

It’s a fine line to walk as ChromeOS starts to slowly undermine the established Windows market. At this stage, it would behoove Google to simply ignore the Microsoft Scroogled campaign and continue building the ChromeOS platform into an even more practical and useful system.

Should Google be running these kinds of campaigns?