I came upon an interesting article this morning about HP presenting the Linux based WebOS which it acquired when buying Palm Computing as its future and "dumping Microsoft Windows.
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/19279-HPs-bold-move.html
Not that WebOS is new, or that Windows is going to be totally left out in the cold, but it certainly seems to have a slightly higher profile now. So, it's going to compete head on with Android and probably a host of other Linux based OS's. Once again, the question around a fragmented Linux world comes to mind. There seems to be very little consensus - Many people and myself think that it's hindering progress to some degree. Maybe there isn't a single silver bullet to solve all problems, but do we need all these "flavours"?
I wonder how much overlap is there between the different projects? I'm pretty sure that there's a growing pool of developers, tools, code base, drivers, standards etc. which can only be a good thing. Another thing is that since HP is one of the biggest hardware manufacturers in the world, I'm guessing that hardware support can't be hurt either. So, in spite of another OS "on the market", I'm sure that overall it's going to be a positive impact.
I personally prefer Google as a search engine. In general, the search quality is very good. However, I'm not sure if there's much between them though - they've both been in the game for a long time. What I do prefer about Google is their less "intrusive" advertising in that it isn't splashed all over the landing page. When I'm searching for something, I don't want to read the news/ look for a job or play games - I simply want to do a search. It's simple and gets the job done.
I use a number of their services/products. I find that they work well, and as mentioned, they've got only a little targeted advertising.
In order to compare, Gmail and Yahoo, I signed up for a Yahoo account a while ago and got pretty annoyed with the advertising banners. Never used it again.
There is a growing concern however over how Google is becoming too "big" and may people have voiced concerns over privacy issues related to building profiles of "individuals" based on searches and monopolistic practices. I find this a small personal price to pay for providing all these superb products. Privacy issues however aren't linked solely to Google however.
As an alternative to both of these, have a look at http://www.bing.com, owned by Microsoft.
Ridicule is the language of the devil.