Google's Android OS running on netbooks!

Linux-based netbooks -- tiny laptops used primarily for Internet access -- are starting to make a dent in the desktop world. My (very non-techie) wife has a Dell Inspiron Mini-9 running Ubuntu and uses it every day for web surfing.

Now word comes that some enterprising jamokes at VentureBeat have installed Google's open-source Android OS on an Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook.

You thought Android was for mobile phones, right? Well, as we’ve written before, Google is planning to use Android for any device — not just the mobile phones.

Besides writing as freelancers for VentureBeat, we also run a startup called Mobile-facts. It took us about four hours of work to compile Android for the netbook. Having done so, we (Daniel Hartmann, that is) got the netbook fully up and running on it, with nearly all of the necessary hardware you’d want (including graphics, sound and the wireless card for internet) running. See the images below for further impressions.

Here’s the significance: Imagine the billion dollar market at stake here if Google can make good on this vision. Netbooks are basically small-scale PCs. For Silicon Valley myriad of software companies, it means a well-backed, open operating system that is open and ripe for exploitation... 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, cheaper and more dynamic to use...

...What does it mean for the stock price of Microsoft? Microsoft currently owns the vast majority of the desktop operating system market share? In recent weeks, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer repeatedly dismissed Android as competition to Windows Mobile...

If Ballmer actually issued such a dismissal, I'd wager it's a mistake on his part.

Update: FAQ regarding Android and netbooks.