Google's HP Play

Google may have just scored a fresh blow in its eternal war with Microsoft. PC manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has announced that its engineers are studying the possibility of using the Android operating system in its new line of inexpensive netbooks. Until now, Android has been used solely for mobile phone platforms, but if HP decides that the system will work well on laptop computers, the system would metastasize into a new line of computing products. And Microsoft wouldn't be too happy. "A shift of Android use to PCs from smart phones would encroach on a market dominated by Microsoft Corp., whose Windows operating-system software is used on more than 90 percent of the world's PCs," reports Bloomberg.

This has been a long time coming. For months, reports Business Week's Aaron Ricadela, HP engineers have been fiddling with Windows to add new features and streamline its operation on netbooks. In particular, HP has been trying to "let users bypass certain features of Windows Vista," which the company has regarded as something of an impediment to watching videos, for example. Android is particularly useful, as the open-source software allows independent developers to create interesting and novel applications for the operating system.

HP has already developed one line of laptops with a Linux-based operating system, but ComputerWorld blogger Steven Vaughan-Nichols argues that Google's brand could break competition in operating systems wide open, as consumers flock to a name they trust. "Anyone who uses a computer knows Google," he writes. "Someone who might be reluctant to try a PC running anything except Windows, and Windows XP by choice, might very well be willing to give a Google-powered netbook a try.

"Earlier this year, I suggested that 2009 would be the perfect year for Google to take Microsoft head-on on the desktop. With this news that serious PC vendors are already tinkering with setting up Android-based netbooks, I'm now predicting it will happen in 2009."