Google TV Heading to Android Ice Cream?

Google may be merging Google TV, Honeycomb and Gingerbread into one Android "Ice Cream" OS. Sounds like an interesting dessert.

Is Google TV heading to the Android mobile platform? That's the current speculation based on unnamed sources, as they claim Google plans to merge the Android Open Source Code for three different platforms: Google TV, Android 3.0 for tablets (Honeycomb), and Android 2.3 for smartphones (Gingerbread). The resulting product will be a Google TV-themed Ice Cream OS scheduled to make its big reveal at the Google I/O 2011 conference on May 10 and May 11.

Phandroid sources reportedly confirmed the marriage of the three platforms, and even went so far as to add that this is the very reason why Google hasn't released the source code for Honeycomb-- because of the planned integration with Google TV and Gingerbread. If Google were to release Honeycomb now and then launch Ice Cream next month, developers would face similar problems currently stemming from the differences between Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

There's no doubt that merging the three would greatly reduce fragmentation. Google would only need to update one (Ice Cream) platform rather than three separate systems. It would be easier to integrate services into one OS despite the underlying hardware. This means an application would not only use the same code, but pull from the same source on every Ice Cream device.

In addition to merging the three Google platforms, there's talk that Google may even add Chrome OS into the collective. Google CEO Eric Schmidt previously said that most mobile apps will soon be written entirely in HTML5 anyway, and has clearly shown this to be true with the launch of the Chrome Web Store. But that could be a ways off given one platform supports native apps and the other supports HTML5 apps. What's surprising is that Google hasn't already incorporated the Web Store into Android's native browser-- or at least, launched a separate Chrome browser to support HTML5 extensions. Then again, Android just recently got a shot of Flash support, so getting HTML5 apps anytime soon may be asking quite a bit.

As for Google TV on mobile devices, will it even receive support by content providers? Currently the search giant is facing an uphill battle in regards to Google TV's present status and the networks' unwillingness to offer content. Some refuse to offer programming until links to pirated content are under control. There's also the whole debate about streaming content to mobile devices without some kind of subscription fee. Both Netflix and Hulu offer subscriptions for mobile devices (on iOS), and Verizon Wireless even provides a subscription-based TV app to customers for streaming recent episodes of network favorites. Obviously streaming TV is possible under the right financial conditions.

Google's I/O conference kicks off just over a month away. Until then, we expect to hear more about Ice Cream and its potential to obliterate Android fragmentation. Based on the provided information, Google may be shooting for a modular operating system similar to Microsoft's Windows 8, allowing the developer to easily remove sections of the OS that don't pertain to a certain set of hardware. Guess we'll find out next month.