"Google, change we can believe in"

OS and computer are two different things. Google isnt making computer hardware. They just might have software to run the hardware.

Exactly. I just said "Google laptop" so that people would know what I mean. Google would make the OS and actual laptop manufacturers would make the case. Google may have some involvement in the design, however.

MS, your days are numbered.

I don't like ms but i fear google is potentialy more evil.

You can't do much evil with open-source code. People could 'clone' any Google OS quite easily but without the 'evil' parts (unlike Windows, where there is no perfect alternative to purchasing it).

is open source googles  strategy indefinetly ? maybe they could do an "ms" as soon as they obtained enough marketshare.

Which is exactly what happened to Chrome.

Google knows that the only way to beat MS (at least in the mobile phone and netbook market) is to use a strategy that MS cannot: giving the OS away for free and making it compatible with existing Linux/Java apps (also free) so it is usable on day one.

Once they do have a market though, their plan is to transition much of the services you use on the desktop (e-mail, office, etc.) into the "Cloud". We have begun seeing this with Gmail and Google Docs, but if they had control over the OS then more integration would be possible. That is the "evil" part of the service - the online parts will not be open and will not be compatible with other applications. Their revenue model is i) advertising on the service itself, ii) subscriptions for professional users (but never for all users) and iii) support contracts for large businesses.

As I said, in order to make people adopt it and so Google don't have to write most of the OS themselves, the OS part will always be open-source. The services and applications will not be, and in that respect they will be worse than MS since you won't be able to save your files to your computer's harddrive.

To some of you who think Google will be the great OS savior, don't buy into the hype. They are a business just like M$ and they will do whatever they like in order to make a better market share. They are no different than m$ in that regard, but atleast M$ doesn't hold your search habits, web browsing history, key logs, and many other things in their server farms. In order to make a Buck, or turn over to the FBI. :D