by SEO Consultant
F. Vazquez
F. Vazquez
Google Android - the open source operating system initially designed for mobile phones - has been proved to work on the Asus EEE netbook by the folks at venturebeat.com.The Google operating system first saw the light in September 2008 when the G1 mobile handset was released into the wild. Before that, there were already rumours of the possibility that Google was aiming to build a universal operating system that would work on any sort of digital device.
Porting Android successfully into a netbook (light-weight, low-cost laptop) effectively shows how flexible the system is. The operating system incorporates two default product policies: one for phones and another one for the broader category "mobile internet devices" (MID) where the Asus EEE falls into. Google Android already supports the basic MID chips drivers but it wasn't an easy or quick task to recompile the OS to support the basic hardware and it will take much longer development efforts to make it run on a standard laptop or desktop PC. At the moment, Android is still far from providing complex OS functionalities such as multithreading, advanced hardware support, schedule tasks to handle PC loads and many others which remain usually transparent to average users but are still essential.
Truly accepted and efficient Mobile Internet has been a New Year prediction for the last 3 years but only now seems close enough to finally take off. And mobile internet is not only about phones or smartphones. While these devices are still oriented to communication, their display size does not allow users to read or write long texts comfortably. Therefore Netbooks are quite appealing to internet users who do not require very sophisticated technology but need a highly portable device with a screen size suitable for reading and a standard keyboard for writing - resulting in a booming market since their inception.
It could be that Google is considering aiming at becoming a leading operating system for these newly emerged devices, a category with huge growth, tied nicely together with Chrome to offer a top-notch support of JavaScript applications.
The traditional Operating System market is already saturated and would require the commitment of a massive amount of resources to compete effectively with Microsoft Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Google obviously has a lot of resources at its disposal but it runs the risk of weakening itself should it attempt too many diversifications.
What's more, competing with the traditional OS players will make it difficult to make expenditures worthwhile since the category could become stale and oriented exclusively to technology geeks, gamers and power users. Although it's not the first time we've seen the Mountain View company push projects ahead disregarding profit considerations.
