Image via venturebeat.com

Everyone has been predicting a Google OS to compete with Windows for years, yet it never managed to show up. It turns out that a Google OS is ALREADY OUT. It’s called Android. In it’s current form Android is being rolled out as a mobile phone operating system, but it turns out that’s not it’s only intended application. Google intends to expand it to be a sort of universal operating system that will span set-top boxes for televisions, mp3 players and other communication and media devices and services. The image to the right is Android running on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook.

So what right? I’m sure that’s not what Microsoft is thinking at this point. The price point for a netbook is pretty low already. Without having to pay for Windows (yes yes I know there are other Linux variants out there… which are ALSO cheaper) they’d be even cheaper. Since Android is designed to run on mobile phones, the footprint must be small… implying that less hardware is required to make it run. Imagine a super cheap, ultra portable computer running the same familiar OS as your phone. Now think of Chrome, Google’s web browser, and the richness it allows developers to build into the browser’s relationship with the desktop — all of this could usher in a new wave of more sophisticated web applications, furthering the distance and reliance on the traditional desktop as we know it. Before we get to ahead of ourselves… don’t expect this puppy to run Photoshop, Windows and the desktop aren’t going to be dead by 2010. But Google is positioning itself to attack Microsoft head on with the combination of it’s already dominant search, applications like GMail, a designed-from-the-ground-up browser for the web 2.0 world called Chrome, and now Android.

You can read how Venturebeat got Android running on the Asus Venturebeat.com.