January 3, 2009
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Lately, Google has been giving Microsoft a good run for its money as the number one private computer company.
Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktop operating systems (OS), Google first consolidated its hold on Internet search
and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications.
In November 2008, Google made its first strike at the desktop with the release of its own
Web browser called Google Chrome. Now,
Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, founders of the stealth startup Mobile-facts, have found that you can take
Google's smartphone operating system, Android, and use it as a desktop operating system.
Krzykowski and Hartmann found that it took them only about four hours of work to compile Android for the netbook.
Having done so, they got the netbook fully up and running on it, with nearly all of the necessary hardware you'd want
including graphics, sound and the wireless card for Internet.
In short, they found that Android was already a desktop operating system, whether you like it or not...
Of course, this didn't come as any surprise to either of them. They'd been expecting Google to use Android for
more than mobile phones for months. What is a bit surprising is that it was already so easy to port Android to a
PC.
Specifically, Google had Android running in desktop Linux mode on a netbook, the Asus Eee PC 1000-H. This is a
pretty standard netbook. If you can get Android to run on it, you shouldn't have much trouble getting it to work on
any desktop.
After all, Android IS a Linux operating system and it's always been easy to move Linux from one platform to
another. What Google is saying is it has found that Android has two product policies in its code. Product policies
are operating system directions aimed at specific uses. The two policies are for phones and MIDs (mobile Internet
devices).
MIDs include devices like the Asus netbook that Google got Android running on.
Google is now seriously considering using Android as a desktop operating system. However, Krzykowski and Hartmann don't
see the search giant making its desktop any time soon. They believe that Android-powered netbooks, thanks to
Android's already existing hardware partners in the Open Handset Alliance, could arrive as early as March 2009.
The duo won't expect that to happen because one important part of the ecosystem would be to have a set of
well-functioning applications, such as an office productivity suite or something similar that would be of great help
for its users.
Google is mostly leaving applications development for Android to third parties, I.E. applications which run in the
browser like Google Docs being the notable exception. At the rate things are going now, we won't see enough of these
third parties developing applications for Android netbooks in the next 12 months.
While it's true that Android's applications are written in the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), Dalvik, instead of
Linux developers' eternal favorites, Gnu C or C++, Android already includes a set of C/C++ libraries.
Porting GCC (the open source Compiler Collection) shouldn't be all that difficult. After that's done, bringing
over OpenOffice 3.0 or the like would be trivial to the Linux community.
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