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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

There will be Google-branded netbooks in Best Buy within a year. No, I'm not saying this based on any actual announcement or special inside information. Just common sense. Abstractly launching an OS doesn't do anyone any good.

Google could work with Dell or something to do this, and Google could even promise to stand behind Dell if Microsoft tries to retaliate in a way that almost nobody else (like RedHat) could.

(Also note that with yet another six months or a year of hardware development, the specs on these netbooks are going to be pretty good. These netbooks also won't be subject to the Microsoft XP "sell it with only 1GB" issue, or anything other netbook-hobbling plans Microsoft might concoct.)

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Or, more likely, one or more netbook vendors are just done rolling their own linux distros for netbooks and have asked Google to step in. They don't want Android, as Android has some hardware requirements established by the OHA that aren't appropriate for netbooks.

The end business goal may be to just get Google to create a better linux option, a -marketable- linux option, so those same vendors can haggle with microsoft for better volume licensing on Windows 7 netbook, including lifting those absurd hardware restrictions.

And I guess it wouldn't hurt to have plan B ready, because users aren't going to tolerate Windows performance on netbooks for long.

I have yet to see Google branded cell phones (based on Android). If this were to happen, then I would seriously question what Google's objective is from a business perspective. To shift directions and get into (old) businesses that are quickly heading towards commoditization is a step backwards.

Keep in mind, their core business is advertising and as mixmax has pointed out, they want to lower the barrier to access this advertising. Trying to convince users to switch operating systems seems to me a rather convoluted path to achieving this objective.

Point. I should have said simply that there will be Netbooks running this within the year. Which, subsequently, there has been an announcement that this will happen.

All I meant to say is that I'm sure this will be concretely available for purchase in stores and not merely some abstract new Linux distro. Nobody will have to "install" it. (It may not even be possible to install it.)

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