

Ask HN: Is the Google OS announcement merely a reaction to Bing? - fiaz


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michaelawill
Do you mean the idea of creating their own OS? Or the timing of the
announcement itself?

Obviously they've been working on this for at least some time now if they are
releasing the code in a few months.

~~~
fiaz
Both. Microsoft has always stated they were interested in getting into the
search business, so there is no surprise there. The fact that they've released
something that is actually good may have spurred Google to make their
announcement before having something to actually demonstrate.

I would imagine (as most have) that they are releasing some sort of Google-
centric Linux distribution. This would make sense as it doesn't take long to
roll your own if you know what you are doing (and I'm pretty sure Google knows
how to do this).

~~~
michaelawill
From google's blog post I'm under the impression that while based on a linux
kernel it will have very little actual code from linux. It sounds like they
are writing their own version of X with a minimalistic window manager.

I very much like the look of the chrome browser so I'm looking forward to
checking this out. Specially since I'm one of those that doesn't do much on
his home machine besides web based stuff.

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dannyr
According to Robert Scoble, this may be a preemtive strike by Google since
Microsoft has something to announce on Monday.

<http://ff.im/4WvjM>

~~~
michaelawill
I thought it was common knowledge that microsoft is announcing the RTM sign-
off on Monday 7-13-2009. This has been known for a while.

WZor.net has more information but they should be choosing which candidate
build is the RTM shortly, and then an officially announcement will come
Monday.

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TallGuyShort
I don't think so. What they've said about Google OS is completely consistent
with the rest of their stated philosophies. In any case, there's already way
too much speculation going on about it.

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TrevorJ
No, it is apples to oranges. If they feel like reacting to Bing, it will be a
more direct approach, such as adding realtime results to Google searches.

