Google Watchers Frown Upon Android Netbook

We recently reported on some speculation that an Android netbook wasn’t out of the question. Xandros and Ubuntu have both been widely used in netbooks, causing many to think that 2009 might be the year Linux breaks Microsoft’s OS domination.

However, Google Watchers have a different view. They recently featured a few comments explaining just why Android wasn’t the way to go.

“I’m very much looking forward to replacing my Symbian phone with an Android phone. But on netbooks, people want full browsers, word processing, and productivity applications. These exist and work great on Ubuntu; Android just doesn’t have them. Furthermore, applications need to be designed very differently for netbook screens/keyboards and phones. What might make sense is to enable running Android apps on top of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, kind of like applets. So, Android might become an add-on to desktop and netbook Linux versions, but it won’t replace it.”

Of course, nobody wants Android to replace Linux. The point of Linux is that all distributions can fairly have a chance of making it. However, Android has a ways to go before it satisfies core reqs for most operating systems:

“I would not want Android on a PC/Netbook. Android is designed for devices with much less processing power, graphics enhancements, and slower disk read speed; Not to mention such limited RAM. If it’s “linux-based”, i would just go with linux. As mentioned previously, running Android Apps on an emulator on Linux would probably work 10x better, although i don’t know why you would want to. Isn’t that like running Windows Mobile over Windows Vista.”

It seems not everyone is excited about an Android netbook.

Via GoogleWatch.