Could google do it? would they?

Ever heard of Android?

 

Sure they could. Look at Android. But I don't see a reason why they wanted to do that.

I mean they have established themselves in other businesses. Wouldn't it be a huge effort to start a new OS from scratch? Time and money consuming.

And it had to be better/having other key features. For me it seems there is already enough competition in the OS market.

But I also don't see why the entered the browser market. Maybe the really are thinkin further with all their docs/mail applications.

So only time will tell.

 

Yes. No.

Google has made it clear that their ultimate vision is OS-agnostic, or possibly even OS-less. Their goal (one I disagree with, actually) is to have users utilizing nothing BUT web-based apps.

Android is an example of this, actually. In and of itself, it only barely meets the requirements of an OS. The linux kernel boots the phone and gets the necessities going, but then largely hands control over to a stripped down version of Java called Davlik VM. And that's where your apps run. Just about everything requires web access of some sort, and you can't really do much on an Android phone without a Google account and lots of interfacing with Google's cloud.

Even so, Google has been known to hack up existing OSes for their internal use. Google's own internal distribution of Ubuntu is an example.

So could they make their own OS? Yes. Will they? Probably not. At most we'll see a very web-intensive type of distribution that, like Android, uses linux or something else to get only the rudimentary functions of a computer running, to pass control to web apps. But to me, that doesn't really count as an OS.

 

For the same reason they entered the moblie OS market. In order to expand the potential audience and "add fuel to the fire" for their competitors.

With all the web apps that now require faster and faster javascript rendering from the browser and the only browsers with decent javascript speed beeing Opera and Safari (which account only for an 8%), Google felt that had to step in and do something. So they launched Chrome with mind-numbing javascript speed under the BSD license (that means that you can actually "steal" code and incorporate it on a propriety program) to "steer" the browser market in the right direction.

The same goes with Android. The only phone with decent browsing capabilities (and therefore a google customer) was the iPhone. So they launched Android to expand their potential customers and fuel the competition.

And to answer the OP, as I see it Google doesn't have any reason at all to enter the desktop market since, as someone mentioned before, they're trying to promote the "everything on the cloud" philosophy

 

I like Google and all, but they aren't gonna get any of my money for an OS.

 

Are they getting any of your money as it is..?