Google should make a Linux

FOR THE CONSUMER desktop/laptop market, Linux has been a non-starter. Sure, you can find many many different flavours of Linux available online, but you can't go to the local Big Box store and get a PC loaded with Linux on it.

For that matter, it's not enven in stock these days at Best Buy. Instead, you find versions running on embedded devices such as my friend Tivo and various other gadgets, but it's all carefully hidden away from the end user.

Within the enterprise, it's a bit more complex. IT shops have shown a preference for Linux and Unix on servers and the desktops of IT people and there's been some proliferation of Linux to the corporate desktop in some companies and businesses, but it hasn't been an overwhelming rout by any stretch of the imagination.

Windows XP remains the current and dominant OS on the desktop for the corporate and the home user. Whether or not this continues through Windows Vista remains to be seen, since it is not an overwhelmingly impressive upgrade and even Microsoft confessed that it doesn't expect to set any records in selling copies. Instead, Vista will slowly appear on new machines as older XP machines slow down and/or die.

Apple-ites believe that people will start buying more Macs and less PCs, but they've been thinking that would happen since 1984 with little success. The Mac is an elite, streamlined machine/OS combination. The problem is that it's an elite, streamlined machine/OS combination in a world where people want to easily and painlessly load on their many flavours of applications and hardware types developed over the decades. Apple basically gives you what it wants you to have, and if you want to colour a little outside of the hardware or software lines, well that's tough - see the iPhone/Cingular relationship as a recent case study of how it is Jobs' way, or the highway.

The only company that currently has the deep pockets and name brand to save us from another decade of Windows domination is Google. Whether or not it wants or desires to is another story.

Google's basic model of the world boils down to the "The Network is the Computer" - Yes, it's ripped off from Sun, but it's what it believes. If you have e-mail, keep it all on Google. Need to do a document or spreadsheet? Do it online at Google. Share a calendar online? Do it at Google?

All roads lead through Google, so if you have 1) A great network connection at all times, day or night and 2) Trust Google to keep your data safe, private and precious, regardless of natural disasters, efforts of random hackers, and governmental pressure, you're ok.

For people living in the real world, having a great network connection at all times day or night is a non-starter the minute the airplane door closes to fly you to your next destination. As for trusting Google with your personal and/or mission-critical data, it's not on the trust level that I give to my local bank.

Floating away in the blogosphere, there have been rumours about Google building and selling its own hardware so people can connect to more Google services. There's also a bunch of talk of Google doing its own OS ranging from a web-based "virtual desktop" to a Linux-distribution with a BIOS for hardware.

Could a Googleux be successful? It would have to allow users to do useful work without a network connection. It would have to be able to read and write existing Microsoft file types, with PDF thrown in for bonus points. It would have to be open enough to allow companies to port their applications and hardware to it. Finally, it would have to be something that PC manufacturers would support with more than lip service - a distribution on a hard drive, with the user able to select/switch from it or Windows Vista. µ