All around watercoolers there’s one topic today: the Google PC! Already two days ago the LAtimes broke the story, which the Inquirer picked up today, as well as numerous sites worldwide.
Obviously the idea itself does not seem to be surprising – a lot of readers overlooked the small line in the LAtimes article:
Here are some predictions for the media industry for 2006, based on interviews with industry analysts, executives and investors, along with a little intuition.
The leading German IT portal heise.de quoted Google Germany press contact Stefan Keuchel:
It’s all rumours without any real basis [but there will be] a couple of interesting things at the upcoming CES.
The idea itself is intriguing. The MIT is working on a 100$ Laptop, and you can get off-the-shelve PC’s without screen and peripherals for as low as 200$. The obvious choice would be to use Linux as the operating system, and maybe a Google branded window manager like in the Google OS hoax a few months ago.
Googles recent deal with Sun and the activities in dark fibre on one side, and Microsofts activities regarding Windows Live seem to be the first signs of a revival of application service providing.
A Google branded PC with broadband internet and a Google branded “OS” sounds pretty appealing and might take a huge chunk of the SoHo market.
Let’s see what gets unveiled at CES …