Given economic reality, Google's give it away with ads MO makes a great deal of sense. At this point in time, Google's free documents app makes a lot more sense to me than spending $100+ for a new version of Office or Word. Quite frankly, the free google docs app is more than enough power for the types of documents and spreadsheets I use. And it works nicely with vista, which is more than I can say for most older MS products. I get tired of lining uncle Bill's pockets.

I'm very much looking forward to replacing my Symbian phone with an Android phone. But on netbooks, people want full browsers, word processing, and productivity applications. These exist and work great on Ubuntu; Android just doesn't have them. Furthermore, applications need to be designed very differently for netbook screens/keyboards and phones.

What might make sense is to enable running Android apps on top of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, kind of like applets. So, Android might become an add-on to desktop and netbook Linux versions, but it won't replace it.

A few observations from inside:
- Chrome is being scored as a potential disaster; leadership expected hockey-stick adoption. They're now saying "marketing" will revive it - we never used to advertise Google products, but now Chrome ads are being built into every toolbar, every Google page, every interaction. Getting tiresome.

- More jobcuts coming, extending well past the contractor base.

- Marissa Mayer spends more time at New York and Paris fashion shows than she does working on "selling Google's future." So no big loss there.

- The big loss is going to be when Eric S. decides to leave; rumors that this is the year for that are really worrying the googleplex. Big, bad signal to the market.

Well, I for one see google going after the netbook market hard. I foresee double touch screen netbooks with android capability to be in the works soon (maybe even gesture enabled?) What hasn't google done, and given enough time, what hasn't google done well. Every IT person out there would be happy to see more linux penetration. One word, adaptability. Just look at what developers have done for android thus far and it's not ever been unlocked for a year yet. Apple and Microsoft annoy me terribly with there proprietary thinking stifling innovation, and I'm not even a computer geek. To take some lingo from my permaculture files, mark my words whole systems design is the trend for 09.

I think its great Google and other vendors are finally getting into the OS game. The fact that Android is open source means we won't have to wait for a large cooperation to come out with new features, instead we get thousands of volunteer coders making it better by the day.

I like google docs and just about everything else they offer. I'd like to see them help expand eyeos with some of their technology.

I'm also a huge fan of Open Source, I'll use my OpenOffice over MS office anyday, and when it comes to browsers I only open IE to goto netflix, which will be no more once boxee is released out of alpha.

Bring on the netbooks, I can't wait.

If it weren't for proprietary thinking, we wouldn't have innovation. Very little has come from the open source community that isn't an exact duplicate of proprietary software. There is no innovation going on. Open source software is great and all, but innovative, it is not.

The thing that folks are not getting yet about google docs it that they enable collaboration in ways that just isn't possible with MS Office, or any other device oriented package. Think meetings with notes taken in a google doc or spreadsheet with several folks entering notes simultaneously into a single doc. After the meeting everyone updates their info. It is all in one doc, nothing to mail around. When folks start to get this new paradigm that will not put up with less, it completely changes the work flow and redefines collaboration.

Sure, Google should push netbooks, but there is no reason a smart phone can't provide an interface to a keyboard, mouse, high res screen and Internet connection. With the cloud and a smart phone 90% of information workers will not need a PC of any type within three years. And projection devices will eliminate the need to luge around a screen.

2009 is the launch year for cloud computing and Google will be the prime beneficiary.

Every time you use Google software you are giving Google more information about yourself. Everything they produce is spyware. I would avoid it like the plague.

Why do we need Chrome when we have Firefox, Android when we have Ubuntu (and many other Linux variants), Google Apps when we have OpenOffice, GMail when we have Yahoo Mail, and etc.

I would not want Android on a PC/Netbook. Android is designed for devices with much less processing power, graphics enhancements, and slower disk read speed; Not to mention such limited RAM. If it's "linux-based", i would just go with linux. As mentioned previously, running Android Apps on an emulator on Linux would probably work 10x better, although i don't know why you would want to. Isn't that like running Windows Mobile over Windows Vista.

Android is far too alpha to be taken seriously. It's barely an interesting brick (first gen).

Same with Chrome..

One year is a decade in computer years, but 2009 for gBooks would be a no go unless they were given away or $99.

There's no way I'm using a browser for an OS anytime soon, or Android on anything other than a phone until they can do with it what can be done with OSX, Ubuntu or Windows. However, on the phone side, Android has the most current potential IMO and if/when I get a new phone, I'll be looking at one.

I love Google, but everyone I know (myself included) has installed Google's Chrome browser only to uninstall it after a day or so. It's so lame. It's like a browser designed for preschoolers. We're all sticking with Firefox until Chrome is redesigned. Maybe then we'll give it another try. Does anyone really need to see thumbnail images of the web sites they visit most often? Ridiculous.

I've been with Verizon for over eight years, my contract just ended and I will be getting a phone with the Android OS. I want to wait to see what comes out after the first of the year to see what the other phones with Android will be like then, the G1 is just so ...oh hum.

i'll rather wait for the next version of the symbian operating system which should be opensource and out in 2009. Symbian was originally designed for netbooks and mobile companions. Im sure they will have a few surprises up their sleeve.

Also symbian is by far the most popular smart phone software available with somewhere nearly 50% of the market. Lets focus on reality, Android is small fish compared to Symbian.

Hopefully the symbian foundation will learn from the mistakes of S60 which was having a very powerful OS that lacked applications, but has a thorough and expensive app store.

Proper penetration would actually need constant development on Google's side. To fix security holes, to create updates etc.
But there's another challenge. This time around they will be putting a piece of software on YOUR pc. Not like google doc's on their own.

So now they'll have to do even more regression testing which they are not used to.
I forsee problems there.

Also where would their 10% come from? I expect Mozilla, not IE. Unless they do strike a deal where they get it pre-installed. The people that do use FireFox are usually the people that will try new stuff. Hence the move away from IE.

Most importantly though: how could you compare a browser with an OS?! Chrome is no OS. Even the so called gOS isn't an actual OS. It does not drive hardware. period.

How about a downloadable Gmail IMAP client, allowing downloading of messages and offline working?
Ideally it should look the same as Gmail, use the same label system and automatically sync Contacts, allowing access to Contacts from other programs such as OpenOffice.

I am a student at Texas Tech University. Of the hundreds of XP PCs for student use, every one is loaded with Firefox, and just about every student is using it to check MySpace or Facebook, unless they're actually doing schoolwork. Problem for Google is that while IE has the TTU homepage, Firefox has the Google Mozilla Start Page that has no mention of Chrome on it at all.

If Android and netbooks had come out five years ago, or before the 1 gig Intel Atom and multi-gig SSD, I'd say there was a chance. But now, why would anybody want a system that does less more slowly than current configurations (not to mention improved hardware a year from now) will do.

Why hasn't anyone coined the term "ChromeBook" yet?
Too obvious?

The supposed gOS isn't going to be a desktop OS. It's going to be your cloud OS. I don't know how it could work but I see a "ChromeBook" netbook with Android as the operating system and Chrome as the portal to the cloud-based gOS. Look, I just need to be able to play Halflife, okay?! :)

My only concern about all of this is the privacy issue of Google knowing everything I do from my bank account to my "amateur video" addictions. But hey, does anyone really believe that they're information is safe anymore. We're all wide open on the internets. Don't be scared! It's the GOOG. "Don't be evil" is more than just a catchy phrase. It's a muzzle for my paranoia ;)