google desktop

(related: jonbenét ramsey, google, google desktop, )

I hope you have hear of the latest rumours regarding a Goobuntu OS supposedly being developed by google based off of Ubuntu. Well, if you havent, you havent missed much. Today (or yesterday) wasnt the first I heard of Goobuntu.

Let me hazard a guess at how this rumour spread. A WEEK ago, I read this profile of Ubuntu/Mark Shuttleworth on the pages of an Africa-based website. That includes the following paragraph:

After reading thisI searched on Google (where else?) and found nothing (excpet a page in Japanese that I could not read) to report and so kept shut. However, I am guessing that an overactive imagination at Register must have made invisible connections between the rumoured google desktop OS and the mention of goobuntu in the google desktop (which must have propagated through the feed-waves), to write this embarassment of an article. Among other things it has this to say:

Again, we run into undisclosed sources and a lack of google desktop details.

I used to read the google desktop once in a while, and had stopped a few months ago - apparently such sensationalist and questionable reporting is what they celebrate the most.

We had to wait a day to hear a google technology norad say that these rumours were not true:

However, the best part of the fiasco was this screenshot!! Folks have a hyper-active imagination, I tell you!

The good that hopefully came out of all this is that google desktop geeks (like us) who cant be seperated from their google desktop and forums would probably now be stoked by the question, so what is this Ubuntu all about then?. I hope a few of them come to stay. That google uses Ubuntu internally is a great thing - a seemingly valid endorsement of how Ubuntus development has progressed so far, towards a simpler, stabler desktop linux.