This sounds almost too good to be true, but I’m an optimist and a believer in most of Google’s endeavours (though I choose to not hold any of their stock if only to be able to claim objectivity). This move makes sense from a business perspective when one considers Google’s mission, its business goals, its evangelical R/D approach and its sheer data-storing ability.

It also mark’s Google’s ability to learn from Microsoft’s (and many other once-monopoly holding companies’) errors: no matter how good or popular a product may be, if it’s forced upon people, the people eventually rebel in one way or another. Either way, there’s resistance. Nowadays, on many IT forums, people are asking why isn’t Google doing more. The question, while perfectly valid, may be somewhat of a moot point: there are doing as much as possible within the constrains of public acceptance into Google’s overwhelming intrusion into almost all IT/IS sectors. The limitations are clearly self-imposed and mostly a sign of extremely good top-level management on all fronts. This, combined with Google’s vast support of the Open Source sector, takes care of almost all existing and foreseeable resistance.

Some may see this as an example of hegemony in practice. To me it’s social capitalism at its best – a perfect example of how it is possible to make a profit while rendering the rest of the world more than happy to help generate that profit.

2. On XP Pro workstations, it has the added benefit of always integrating itself differently. I have seen it destroy WMI, bring back the infamous svchost @ 100% CPU problem, and deploying it through SMS caused one of my domains to collapse because of 2-3 workstations acting up (and my workstations are mirrored insofar as hardware/operating system/core applications are concerned).

3. As far as private workstations are concerned, I am still waiting to see WGA work well with non-MS based update services. I use a customized version of Daisy with some clients to push critical updates, and in many places where I removed Internet Explorer entirely, I use the Mozilla update solution. Both solutions are fine, except in the case of WGA.

4. WGA is released anew every few weeks. Hackers are always just steps ahead of MS and it is going to remain that way. But the rest of the world gets really unnerved about having to install unstable, buggy software, that dubiously claims itself to be critical. And every time its ramifications are just as unexpected as the first time. In effect, I end up installing WGA updates in lab environment first, which adds a ton of overhead costs.

5. Lastly, WGA is extremely script unfriendly. Its time-delay when logging in on a station suspected of not being genuine cannot be accessed using a hook. In effect, this causes some hardcoded scripts (login or custom) to time out, especially if your scripts are time-based. Seemingly a minor issue, this has the potential of a disastrous cascade effect.

While I consider myself a long term supporter of MS technologies, especially when it comes to managing any kind of network architecture where the workstations are Windows-based, I am finding myself more and more tired every day. This peeves me right off, especially when I feel forced to use IE. Granted, IE 7 looks promising, but everything about it feels like a 1:1 clone of FireFox.

Anyway, if you feel like reading more or need help tackling WGA, check out this article on ZDNet. As for me, I’ve made one significant decision – yesterday I formatted my test server at home which was previously home to Windows Server 2003 RC 1 and started installing Linux OpenSUSE 10.1 – I’ve heard it’s an excellent desktop replacement for long-time Windows users and if it does not live to my expectations, I’ve almost finished downloading the server edition of Linux Ubuntu. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.