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It seems unlikely, but there may not be any alternative. It's not like they can jump into bed with apple, and android is still lacking for desktop tasks, so just maybe that number 3 player will grow a little.

There are plenty alternatives. Tizen, JollaMobile, Ubuntu, FirefoxOS, Blackberry 10 for example.

But if the OEM likes to bet on the current number one then Android is it and only Android. At least it gives them way more options to build something up on, expand into growing or set on new markets. A future.

Edited 2013-01-13 18:11 UTC

Nah, they'll probably get sued for patent violations and have to pay an extortion fee to companies like Microsoft, just like HTC does with their Android devices.

I can hardly wait for Asus Linux, HP Linux, Sharp Linux, LG Linux, Dell Linux, ...

Each with its own package format, update server and customized user interface for our own benefit.

They would need a common ground in order to have something for major developers to target.
If there was no commonality, and easy means of installation regardless of vendor, they would never swap from Windows.

Android or Ubuntu are the only choices which will allow them to have a nice, common platform with a large existing userbase, and an easy experience.
Mind you, they would all obviously ship their own DEs based on theming existing DEs, but so long as it was Ubuntu LTS at the core, with the software centre, it would mean ease of installation and configuration.

I would just nuke whatever "Linux" they preload and install whatever distribution I want anyway, so the fact that I wouldn't be paying a Windows tax upfront would be a good enough advantage for me. That's the whole point of a "general purpose" computer after all, isn't it? That it can be programmed and configured to work as you see fit?

And choice is not bad... do you really get pissed when you walk down the cereal aisle in your local supermarket and see countless brands and types of cereal to choose from, often imitations of each other with seemingly nothing different other than the price tag? Do you really wish every car at a car dealership was just a black Model T so you didn't have to worry about pesky differences like comfort, features, power, and fuel efficiency? Would we really be better off if the only beers in the world were the "Light" flavorless variants of Bud, Miller and Coors, with all those traditional styles and delicious craft beers forced off the shelves and their brewers forced out of business?

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if just like Vista the OEMs pull a "gang of nine" and demand (and get) the right to sell Win 7 and Ballmer will end up being told by the board around Xmas of this year to "pursue other interests". because its either that or the OEMs start building ChromeBooks and ChromeTops and MSFT will be the company people talk about needing to close their doors and give the money back to the shareholders.

Ironically all those that cheered Google and Open Source are about to get a RUDE awakening, because the future is NOT tablets, its game consoles. What do I mean by that? Black boxes, machines that boot from a locked BIOS to a locked OS that gets corporate approved apps from a corporate owned appstore and when no longer supported by corporate can be thrown in the tash because like a game console you won't be able to really do anything else with it unless you are handy with a soldering iron.

Anybody look at the new ChromeBooks? Can't run Debian, or Vector, or Red hat, or Slax, even though we are talking a Celeron dual, hard drive, bog standard laptop parts, why? Because Google has locked down the UEFI, just like MSFT! Now the ONLY thing you can run other than corp approved ChromeOS is to jump through a couple of pages of CLI and do a LOT of finger crossing (because there is a chance that by even attempting this you'll void your warranty as you have to completely wipe the drive just to get it to work) and at the end of that you can run ONE, just one, hacked UEFI version of Ubuntu, which probably won't be supported for anything other than a limited time because its literally being made by one guy.

So sorry about the length, but looking into the future its sadly looking like a corporate wet dream, a future made of suck and fail. Everyone is cheering the big bad MSFT finally dying without noticing that what is coming to replace them? Even worse! At least with Windows on X86 it was easy to run whatever downloaded from anywhere or just wipe the thing and slap any BSD or Linux you wanted, thanks to the iSheep making Apple the richest corp on the planet ALL the new devices are gonna be game consoles, because "hey that's what folks want, look at Apple!". Better hang onto your old gear, and buy yourself the most powerful deaktop and laptop you can afford, because i truly believe we are in the last gasps of the golden age of open hardware. What we are gonna get next is game consoles all the way down, from the desktop to the tablet to the cellphone, its all gonna be locked down black boxes you throw away every 2 years when the corp drops support.

Back to the 80's, before the clone wars.

Google doesn't use UEFI.

They use coreboot on their Intel based devices and uboot on their ARM based device - and looking at moving to coreboot there as well (see coreboot repository: http://review.coreboot.org)

The default is a no-pain system that allows Google to push updates while having a way to recover even from broken firmware updates. That one is signed-and-everything.

Then there's the developer switch, with which certain boot options change: signature checks are gone, graphics are initialized earlier (making it easier to boot non-ChromeOS), ...

Yes, that's not your typical open box, but Google did exactly the right thing: They provide a hardware based user override. From there, it's a bunch of steps to get your own system on there (since they customize the boot process to their liking), but it's Google employees writing these documents detailling the CLI commands (oh the horror!), and they even support external hackers trying to run other systems.

Will they continue to do that should ChromeBo{xes,ooks} ever gain dominance on the market? My magic 8-ball is as good on that as yours. Right now it's hard to blame them for not being open.

Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

That was Dec 2011. See how things have tightened up in just one year since then.