Google Android Will Soon Control Your Home

Google Android Will Soon Control Your Home: "
When Google announced its Chrome OS, there was one question we kept asking in the back of our heads: what’s going to happen to Android? Android, Google’s mobile operating system, is coming to netbooks next month. But Chrome OS is also starting with netbooks, so where does that leave Google’s other operating system?

Apparently, Android has found a new market for assimilation: home appliances. According to a report on Forbes, a wave of touch-screen devices are about to be unleashed on the market later this year. They will be capable of everything from controlling your lights to managing your stereo remotely. Oh, and all of these devices are going to run on the open-source Android platform.

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Android’s “Touch Revolution”

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Touch Revolution, a company that builds the touch screens and provides the Android features for these types of devices, makes the assertion that well-known companies are coming out with home management tools this year that will run on the Android OS. In fact, the company divides them into three categories:

1. Home control devices: These will be touchscreen platforms that can activate and manage security, control the house lights, or switch off the A/C

2. Media control devices: More adept remote control over things like DVRs and stereos

3. Home Phones: What Touch Revolution calls “smart phones for the home”

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A new purpose for Android

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While we see the utility in these types of devices, you may be wondering why they would pick Google Android for this sort of thing. The Forbes article touches on that too:

“Why use Android at all? Brown says its partners liked the operating system’s ease of use, openness and touch-centric features. They also regarded it as a bargain since Google is distributing it for free.”

Android was originally built for touch-screen phones, and thus a modified Android OS for touch screen tablets and devices seems only logical. Google Chrome OS, on the other hand, will focus on web applications and load speeds.

So it looks like Androids will soon be running our toasters and Chromes will eventually be powering our netboooks. That’s both really cool and a little scary at the same time.

Tags: android, Google, Google Android