It’s no secret that Google wants to bring Android to laptops and desktops, and is even sacrificing Chrome OS to get there. It seems this effort is gaining some serious traction lately, as evidenced by a conversation between Rick Osterloh, Google’s SVP of platforms and devices, and Qualcomm’s CEO, Christiano Amon, during Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit.
Google may have just dropped its clearest hint yet that Android will soon power more than phones and tablets. At today’s Snapdragon Summit kickoff, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon and Google’s SVP of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh discussed a new joint project that will directly impact personal computing.
“In the past, we’ve always had very different systems between what we are building on PCs and what we are building on smartphones,” Osterloh said on stage. “We’ve embarked on a project to combine that. We are building together a common technical foundation for our products on PCs and desktop computing systems.”
↫ Adamya Sharma at Android Authority
Amon eventually exclaimed that’s he’s seen the prototype devices, and that “it is incredible”. He added that “it delivers on the vision of convergence of mobile and PC. I cannot wait to have one.” Now, marketing nonsense aside, this further confirms that soon, you’ll be able to buy laptops running Android, and possibly even desktop systems running Android. The real question, though, is – would you want to? What’s the gain of buying an Android laptop over a traditional Windows or macOS laptop?
Then there’s Google’s infamous fickle nature, launching and killing products seemingly randomly, without any clear long-term plans and commitments. Would you buy an expensive laptop running Android, knowing full well Google might discontinue or lose interest in its attempt to bring Android to laptops, leaving you with an unsupported device? I’m sire schools that bought into Chromebooks will gradually move over to the new Android laptops as Chrome OS features are merged into Android, but what about everyone else?
I always welcome more players in the desktop space, and anything that can challenge Microsoft and Apple is welcome, but I’m just not sure if I have faith in Google sticking with it in the long run.
First question to ask is whether one would even want google on laptops and desktops. Having a hard enough time degoogling my smafo without adding to the misery on my other computers, thankyouverrymuch.
Apart from that, I would rather have android improving the phone’s desktop modes.
My answer: no way
Chromebooks seemed to have a pretty polished, pretty robust OS, and quite secure. Very good for parents for one thing.
Android seems like such a mess internally, evolved organically and with so much cruft. It seems to work ok though on the popular devices.
Don’t know, I guess I’d buy an Android latop, at the right price (something like the Chromebook Duet), for browsing an such. It does seem useful to be able to install some Android apps, some of which work better than the equivalent web apps.
They already did this, I had a netbook that dual-booted Windows 7 and Android 1.0. I only booted into it once and it was dreadful.
Now that Android is roadmapped to no longer be usable as a general-purpose OS it is even less likely that anyone would want it on their desktop.
Who would this operating system be for?
Casual internet browsers looking at facebook and gamers who only play mobile games? It would right off the bat have the same issue that ChromeOS and Linux have/had for desktop adoption. No AAA productivity apps.
Yeah, I know people will argue about all the alternative software available, but at the end of the day, even as a die hard macOS user, business runs off of all the horrible Microsoft and Adobe ecosystem of apps, and that will never land on android. Just like they never landed on ChromeOS or Linux natively. Neither will anything from SolidWorks, AutoCad, Canva.. etc.
It would also have to same issue that macOS has now that is lives on Arm. The lack of any AAA games that aren’t emulated in some hacked way. If there isn’t a Steam client, If it doesn’t work out-of-the-box, the general public will never adopt it. I would have to have a lot of AAA apps and games available day one for mass adoption (without any advanced terminal hackery) , or it would fall into the ChromeOS and Linux category of hobby OS’s.
Trust a Google OS on my laptops or desktops? Yeah, sure, about as much as Red Star OS. Why not?