The buzz all last week and weekend has been about Google OS. With more than just one pundit going on and on endlessly about how silly it is for Google to introduce a second OS for NetBooks when they were all ready getting traction with Android blah blah blah blah. Try this one on for size
Android is Google OS. Always was. Always will be.
You see Android in it’s current form is an excellent platform for smartphones. However last time I checked you and I want a lot more out of our Netbooks than we do out of our phones. (though I have to confess I can’t find enough ways to explain how much having a smartphone has improved my life.) But it doesn’t replace my netbook or notebook. So then how can I say that Android is Google OS. Simple, let’s look at what Android really is, even more so, what is any Linux “OS”.
Android is, as any “Linux OS” a kernel with a collection of tools on the backend. In other words no matter how you stack things on top of the kernel it’s still Linux. Most Linux Distro’s are really a combination of the Linux Kernel and GNU tools backed up by X. Android is the Linux kernel, with GNU tools, backed up by Dalvik JVM. In short to go from Android to Google OS you need to change drivers, change the compile options (x86 arch instead of ARM) remove things like dialers and utilities specific to the phone world and poof. You have GoogleOS.
Browsers? Google already has it. It’s chrome. Office Suite, Google docs. on and on all those things that so many mistakingly think are part of their OS Google already has. What Google was and is missing is the one thing they thrive on. Data. The only way to get that data is, as it always has been to poke at the world around them and see what happens.
Since Google announced rather surreptitiously, that there would be a GoogleOS, pundit’s have been climbing the walls with their critics of the design of something that existed only in a blog. In other words, if Google ever wanted to know how best to create a NetBook OS for the masses, they needed only to put out a hint and let the masses design it for them.
In the end GoogleOS needs only the kernel, toolset and windowing system from Android, and they will be off and running. In the end the name changes but the players remain the same. So now you know. Android is really a Transformer 😉
