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Comment by mchanson | Hacker News Reader

I'm really interested to see if this means WebOS would compete with Android in a meaningful way. Google puts a lot of work into outreach/support/evangelism to handset makers and I think also carriers. Android's big because of being open, but also because of all of the efforts Google is making. HP is not really known for being reliable lately in their strategic direction... My prediction (for all that is worth) is that this doesn't change the landscape very much.

Totally interesting. Can't wait to see what happens.

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I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we end up with people making a compatibility layer between the two somehow. Without a major backer, WebOS won't ever be a big deal. But if you could run Android apps on the WebOS UI...

That's possible, but I think that the more likely scenario is the opposite - WebOS apps on Android. With a competent Webkit environment on the phone and Enyo open sourced, it seems possible, simple even.

Don't worry: Android's build of Webkit still has plenty of work before it's good enough to be considered competent. Apple's Mobile Webkit, on the other hand...

Great point. Most of the popular open source projects in the JS space (jquery or node.js for instance) have a person that serves as the voice of the projects. I think if someone from the webOS dev team stepped up to take that role, I'd be a lot more confident in where the platform is headed.

Why wouldn't Google embrace WebOS? Their business is advertising and this will be as good a platform as any.

But they have their own platform which they exercise more control over. They would have to work with individual vendors to get full Google Apps support natively on WebOS devices. Why would they embrace that and do extra work when they can continue to push their own effort?

They would get the same benefit at a lower cost. They want their apps (& advertising and data collection) to be ubiquitous.

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