Spending the day at google makes for a great mind-bending exercise on where they see the future of computing.
Here is what I see coming down the oo's tubes.
Google has denied that they are making an OS. I 100% believe them. They don't care. Especially about the desktop.
The desktop is dying. In the future we will have two types of machines: Mobile devices, and 'smart-dumb terminals'. The smart-dumb terminals, as I am henceforth dubbing them, will have some OS, and a moderate (probably still high by today's standards) ammt of computing power and a trivial ammt of disk space.
Google is feverishly investing in both of these areas, with AppEngine, Android, gears, local, social, gwt (for 'enterprise') etc, etc, etc. They are creating the tools to take computing in this direction.
They have perfected the art of web scale, and that will make prove to be their most valuable asset in this new computing world. With this, they get developers everywhere to lock-in to their (admittedly wonderful) tools. What they do is create the base for all of these tools, and let great developers show them off, which creates Google's user base for them.
It's a very impressive plan for a company who says "don't be evil". Quite subversive compared to most other models that other (non-named) companies have taken to get developers to buy-in (quite literally) to their product.
How do you get developers? Make the tools better than the current tools. Give the tools away for free.
Happy googling everyone.
#io2008 *(just a tag for searches, until keywords are fully supported in Servee).