Google PC to Hit Walmart?

Fahrvergnuugen writes "According to latimes.com Google is set to launch the Google PC which will run Google's own operating system. From the article: 'Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap -- perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.'"

Misleading

[RickPartin]

This Slashdot summery makes it sound like this is a sure thing. It is only a rumor at this point. Here is a quote from the article

"Here are some predictions for the media industry for 2006, based on interviews with industry analysts, executives and investors, along with a little intuition."

Re:Low cost?

[knopf]

Windows XP is quite expensive from the OEM's. For example this supplier [chiligreen.at] sells PCs with Windows and Linux. The Linux ones are 82 Euros (about $100) cheaper.

Given that you can buy PCs for $350, this is about 1/3 of the price.

A few random Google OS links...

[FalconZero]

Information regarding the OS is sketchy (read: rumours), so here's some (non-authorative) links:

• What Wold Microsoft Do (Editor's Blog) [softpedia.com]
• A Google OS by 2010 (Article) [osnews.com]
• GooOS (Blog) [kottke.org]
• The new 'G' o/s (Article) [rankforsales.com]

I'm not so sure about the name 'GooOS' that people are chosing to use. The domain GOOOS.COM is registerd to [enom.com] whoisprivacyprotect.com [whoisprivacyprotect.com] (a subsidiary of Enom [enom.com]), but the CC domains like gooos.co.uk are not yet registered (which seems like a bit of a mistake if thats the name google intend (read:speculation) to use.)

Re:Name?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google's" is a perfectly valid contraction of "Google is". Obviously "Google is" is not a contraction: it's the original phrase.

The sentence about "its" doesn't apply in this case at all, since the original post didn't use the word "its".

Since both links indicate that "Google's not Unix" is quite correct, what's your point?

Re:Speculation, but an interesting thought

[Darkon]

Would they buy a GoogleBox, that allows them to access their web mail, google office (assuming its not a myth) and various web sites "without a computer", and all they have to do is hook it up to a DSL/Cable line and a power line?

Sure, just like they bought all those "internet appliances" and "web terminals" which were supposed to be the next big thing a few years ago and now go for peanuts on eBay [ebay.com].

Re:Low cost?

[manuell]

> The Linux ones are 82 Euros (about $100) cheaper.

Yes, but the Windows ones come preinstalled, not the Mandriva ones.

Re:Low cost?

[baadger]

Well the cost of customers having viruses and spyware maybe but not the license :-)

Some of the time thats the fault of the OEM's. Some even come with (spy|crap)ware out of the box ffs. A friend of mine recently bought a cheap OEM machine which had SP2 installed just fine, but not a single hotfix since. Spybot S&D found several (albeit minor) issues straight away.

Worse still is most OEM's give you a rubbish recovery disc that restores this poor condition, with no Windows disc to be found. (I always use Magic Jelly Bean's keyfinder [magicaljellybean.com], to find the CDKEY used by the OEM, and burn off an XP OEM disc myself, with SP2 and all the post-SP2 hotfixes slipsteamed using nLite [nliteos.com]. For my friend I also made his disc as unattended as possible and included some useful batch files and drivers)

If you want to avoid the second issue you mentioned you have to goto a small time box builder that'll give you a quality installation, unfortunately I suspect you're going to get hit with the real cost of the Windows license.

Re:Exercise for the reader

[eraserewind]

You seldom hear anyone bitching about Google.

That's because we don't buy anything from google.
People who pay for ads bitch all the time about google.

Re:The article is misleading

[cgenman]

Sony released a hdd/Linux combination for the PS1 and the PS2. They were called Yaroze [wikipedia.org] and PS2 Linux [wikipedia.org]. PS3 Linux is a natural extension of these.

They were basically a very expensive ways for hobbyists to get their hands dirty with the console before moving on to full-on game development (the graphics subsystems were locked out), while Sony had an expensive source to mine for ideas [allps2.com].

Google would benefit ...

[raarts]

Let's see.. Google already runs tens of thousands of servers. They have stated they need more bandwidth and more power.

Wouldn't it be great if they have a computing box in *every* home, just to extend their computing power? No power bills, no need to buy more hardware?

Give the owners some of the benefits (cached searches, gmail, maybe use it as a PC in some ways, and otherwise use the box for your own purposes.). Interesting thought.

Re:There are other signs...

[bynary]

First off, when the L.A. Times says "sources tell us", it's a little more reliable than your typical rumour site or ZDnet blogger.

Why? Because they get paid?

Secondly, look at Google's efforts to port stuff like the Google toolbar to Firefox.

Uh...they already had it on IE. How does porting it to Firefox make it any more likely that they're developing an OS?

...Picasa...

Google bought Picasa. Maintenance and updates are done in-house now, but the original concept and look-feel was done by another company several years ago.

The only OS that can be spyware and virus-free is one that's installed on a computer that's never turned on. If there's code running on a computer, someone somewhere will figure out how to break it. It's just a matter of time.

Seamless desktop-Internet application, where most applications either are already web applications or hook into web applications.

Have you looked out your out-bound traffic lately? Many if not most applications connect to some kind of web service or server somewhere. Even seemingly mundane applications like text-editors and such have built-in access to the network stack. If you want seamless, try any current version of a Microsoft Office product and click on the Help icon. Poof! It displays help from an online repository.

Worry-free online storage and backup of all documents, email, etc.

Huh...I thought that Apple had already pioneered this with .Mac.

A stream of new applications and regular upgrades that are all performed by Google, with no hassle to the user

Ever used YaST? How about the Update Control Panel under OS X? Have you turned on automatic updates under Windows XP?

Let's see...you forgot to mention automatic discovery of other network devices (Apple's Rendezvous), oh yeah and it could automatically detect your digital camera and download the pictures from it and as an added bonus it would delete the pictures from your camera when it's done (oh yeah, both iPhoto and Picasa do that)...

Sorry, I think you really missed the boat on this one...

Re:Low cost?

[ceejayoz]

Uh... formatting a hard drive in Windows XP:

My Computer > Right-click on drive > "Format"

You must not have looked very hard, and if it didn't cross your mind to use the drive's installation CD either, you shouldn't be using Windows or OSX - you should be using this [amazon.com].

I'm the proud owner of a Mac mini, by the way, and I'm no fan of Windows, but FUD is rediculous.

Re:Google an accessory to Walmart's evil?

[umeboshi]

A camera is a passive monitoring device, not an active one. It only forwards the light that enters the lens. Active monitors are those devices that emit waves and measure their reflective signals. Examples of active monitoring devices are radar, and microwave motion detectors(not the passive IR).

"Would you hold back technology in the worry it could be used for evil ends?"

Can you do anything about the people who hold back technology in the worry that it could be used for evil ends?

Take a look here http://www.wassenaar.org/ [wassenaar.org]

Pay special attention to the sections on dual use technologies.

They will PAY you at Walmart to take it home!

[abelikoff]

Who needs common sense when you can ride the industry craze. A couple years ago we would hear about a Java Operating System, that would render laptops free. Today it's all Google: "The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap -- perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars."

Too bad the idiots didn't bother to check the facts: Windows OEM license is actually in the $50-$90 range. That's exactly the savings you get for not preinstalling Windows on a PC. The rest is hardware.

There is another somewhat plausible explanation of low cost however: having an Operating System so lightweight, it doesn't requires too much hardware. For a common e-mail-browser-wordprocessor-spreadsheet use case one doesn't need 1Gb or RAM. Building an OS that is oriented toward that use case should result in much lower resource requirements, making hardware cheaper.

Re:They will PAY you at Walmart to take it home!

[sheldon]

Windows OEM license is actually in the $50-$90 range.

More likely $20 or so range, when you're talking mass buyers like Dell.

The Google.com OS will probably be nothing but a web browser, which let's you go to Google.

Re:Google branded Windows?

[blamanj]

You might want to learn how Google works. Punctuation and most non-text characters are discarded. That means your "win$hit" query is actually two words, "win" + "hit". Nothing to do with windows at all.