Microsoft will for the first time publicly the next version of its flagship operating System, Windows 7, during the Professional Developer’s Conference to take place in Los Angeles during the last week of October.

See more at http://www.microsoftpdc.com.

PDC (Professional Developer’s Conference) is the premier Microsoft’s event for developers. The exciting thing about PDC is that, contrary to TechEd, it does not happen every year. It only happens when Microsoft “has something new to say”. Because of that, its contents are somewhat foggy; the real news is “saved” for the event itself.

 

In no PDC was this most striking than PDC 2000 in Orlando. In the agenda you could see that there were only “general sessions” and absolutely no abstracts were published beforehand. Even then Microsoft managed to attract about four thousand curious developers to see what used to be called the “New Generation Windows Services”, now known as “.NET”. You can check at http://www.microsoftpdc.com/.

 

This year there are abstracts published, but the main focus – as far as I can tell – will be “Extending the Platform to the Cloud”. From a developer point of view it seems it’s a new set of APIs to stuff over the Internet in deeper ways that it’s now easily possible. There’s video about the strategy at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Countdown-to-PDC-2008-This-is-the-Software--Services-PDC-Plus-a-Hard-Drive-Chock-Full-oBits-is-a-PDC/.

 

And BTW, I just got the wind that there will be so many things delivered that they will give away a 160GB USB hard disk to each participant with the contents in!

 

I will be there.

Last week Microsoft put out Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8. One of the touted advantages was better compliance to Web standards, something Microsoft has been accused of not doing well in previous versions.

 

Now Google launched its own browser, “Chrome”. At first it sounds strange:  why spend money when there are already good browsers around, like IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera? Google says that it “wants to give users a better, faster and more reliable browser”. How noble of them.

 

I myself think there are more selfish motives. Google has some of the hottest Internet properties and gets a lot of money from advertising. If they managed to control the client, they can get some very clear benefits:

 

Their “term of use” is quite long at more than 4000 words plus several web links. The privacy link has no less than 32 links to other pages. “Chrome’s policy itself is another 1100 words long. It does have suspicious wording. Read some of it:

 

“Your copy of Google Chrome includes one or more unique application numbers. These numbers and information about your installation of the browser (e.g., version number, language) will be sent to Google when you first install and use it and when Google Chrome automatically checks for updates.”

 

“Sites that you visit using Google Chrome will automatically receive standard log information similar to that received by Google”

 

“In consideration for Google granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Google may place such advertising on the Services.”

 

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

 

I am not the only one with mixed feelings. Check this blob by a lawyer : http://tapthehive.s483.sureserver.com/discuss/This_Post_Not_Made_In_Chrome_Google_s_EULA_Sucks. He is very suspicious about the rights you give Google by simply using their software.  Check this too: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10030522-56.html?tag=txt.

 

So now it seems that Microsoft is indeed migrating to “standards based browser” while Google is going exactly the other way – and stealing your stuff in the process. Do no evil my a**.

 

BTW, hours after release somebody found a serious security flaw in Chrome: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1843