Content Distribution: Operating Systems As Media Channels

"Call it the widget revolution. Mac OS X, Windows and Linux all have widgets for pulling in available content from small software houses and other sources around the Internet.

Although users can cull these free bits of data from elsewhere on the Web, the widget, thanks to Apple, has become a major element for the marketing associated with the operating system itself.

Decreasing emphasis on the chassis of an operating system and focusing more on its widget-like features is indicative of the direction that OS vendors are going, say many analysts. The increasing homogenization among operating systems means that the future of the OS might just be about content.

Because operating systems are beginning to look interchangeable, the free information represented by widgets and other content-distribution methods becomes a way for vendors to differentiate their systems from the competition."

Though Elizabeth Millard (the author of this piece) dimisses content-push through operating systems as a likely "short-lived" one, I tend to see a much longer and deeper evolution for which today's widgets are just the tip of the iceberg.

As telecom companies are struggling to become television enterprises and video distributors, it is not that far fetched to imagine (and I am certainly not the first to say this) operating system manufacturers to take on a similar role in the near future.