Google produce an operating system.... Nope.
however... a Google Linux distro would be interesting !

Google is a great search engine with good indexing (not always) There are times that a search for a specific company or their product yields anything but that.

Google are where yahoo was before all the advertizing and added junk was put on their site. Advertizing makes the money so I can understand where they come from.

Because Google have a great search engine don't mean they will have the same with an OS. The cost of developing an OS that are not open soure will be monumental. The cost of research and programming will be paid by Google or in the end by users of Google products. So to pay for it Google will add more advertizing to the site and everything will slow down.

You can be good a some things all the time, all thing some time, but not all things all the time.

Google have a good search engine, a good add-on menubar (if you like those), I don't have gMail so I can't comment on that.

They have "Google Services and Google tools" and the great thing is they are an option. If you don't click on the more button you'll never see them. A lot of companies could learn from that, don't force feed visitors what you offer. Let people look around and chose what they like.

No - I don't think Google OS is a great idea

Nils

Why a Google OS wouldn't work...

Sure, your files would all be indexed and cross-referenced, but do you really want to have a bunch of pigeons hooked up to a Beowulf cluster just so you could find your home directory? (search "PigeonRank" on google)

And what happens when your country decides to censor Google?(this happened, once, somewhere) How are you going to access your OS?

And talk about being redirected to far-away call centers--what if your support was on the moon?(Google announced their new moon-base a few months ago) Talk about delays.

So don't bug Google-just use 'find -name'. Really, do you want to just feel "Lucky" about a mission-critical file?

I dont think this post is about an OS that network boots or stores its file on the google servers, just an OS developed by google which installs to your local hard disk like most other OS's.

I think its too late for any *NEW* operating systems to be developed.

not too long ago, someone offered linus a sum of money (a few hundred thousand) for a copy of the linux kernel to be released under the BSD licence (meaning it could be forked as closed source)

after this was made public, the actual cost of the linux kernel was calculated, if linux had been developed (just the kernel) as a closed source project, it would have cost billions to develop.

If any new OS's were developed, for them to even compete with modern Unix / Linux / MacOSX. they would need to heabvily use open sourced software like a Linux / BSD kernel, and GNU utilities like the C compiler, Graphical user interfaces like KDE.

a new OS completely written from scratch would be very very very expensive, and possably never catch up to developing OS's.

Unless Hardware significantly changes (Quantum computers ?) i dont think we will ever see any new OS's that dont very closely resemble *nix.

I would say if they made one, I'd give it a shot. But I wouldn't buy it, because they'd probably give it out for free, and maybe open source. Although I don't think it's needed at all. If you play games, then use Windows, if you don't use Linux, they make it easier all the time.

[quote=MajesticTreeFrog,Dec 24 2004, 12:06 AM]
Really, a google OS isn't what is needed. What is needed is a free OS that is as easy to use and work with as microsoft's Windows(for the normal tasks that a normal noob will do on a computer), but without the downsides and pitfalls of both windows and linux in its current form.

Linux could get there, and I look forward to trying out ubuntu linux/gnoppix to see if they have moved things that direction.

[/quote]

I agree but unfortunately an OS that works like Windows would be illegal and the big Microsoft Corporation would crush it before it would be widely used.

[quote=Darren,Dec 24 2004, 12:07 PM]
i think its called CherryOS

or maybe not.. i cant find a good link.

anyways, there IS an open source clone of MS windows, which is compatable with windows applications, no emulation !

however last time i looked, it was a long way from being finished.

[/quote]

Cherry OS is actually an emulator which lets you run a Mac OS on your PC. It's out now and you can download it for about $50. You can proabably find more info here.

I also agree that with Majestic and Dizasta on a Google OS not being what is needed right now but if it does come out and is good then I would try it to see what it's like.

[/quote]

Don't bother with Cherry OS because it is nothing more then a rip off of PearPC. If you want more information about this check out the Cherry OS Post.

Come on guys, Google guys have already enough work. I also read in another topic taking about a Google Webhost service. I am sure those (awesome) guys will make everything they can. If they can make a webhost service, they will make it, and will be kick ass. Just let them be

I think it's a great thing what the people at Google are doing for the internet comunity at the moment, and they sure are making a huge influence and impact, but as they get more and more powerful, I feel they will go down the road of Microso%t, and put the green stuff ahead of their loyal customers. I would be against a Google OS, I would never buy it or trust it, as they would simply become too powerful, and they would surely lose a large chunk of the popularity.

you have to remember if there is a will, there is a way! - sure if google made a OS that prevented files from being infected, it would only be a matter of time before some hacker bypasses the new security.

You will just allways have to be 1 step ahead hehe

I think an google OS would be a bad idea. Google is good at searching(not all the time...but hey nothing is perfect) And I think they should stick to what they are good at.