GoogPC coming?

Here's one of the weirder predictions I've seen for 2006 (outside of the giant 14.4 mile-long asteroid [or sometimes a comet] crashing into Earth and destroying All Life As We Know It, of course). According to the L.A. Times...

Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that connects to the Internet.

Sources say Google has been in negotiations with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., among other retailers, to sell a Google PC. The machine would run an operating system created by Google, not Microsoft's Windows, which is one reason it would be so cheap — perhaps as little as a couple of hundred dollars.

Bear Stearns analysts speculated in a research report last month that consumers would soon see something called "Google Cubes" — a small hardware box that could allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files between their computers and TV sets.

The hand crank (courtesy of the M.I.T. "$100 computer") is my own prediction, but what the hell, it makes as much sense as Google creating its own computer cum operating system and selling it through Wal-Mart. The "Google Cubes" theory is a little more palatable, imo, but again, you have to believe that Google has some sort of master plan for world domination, at least in the Internet sense, which I don't.

Of course, there's an entire year to prove me wrong, but if I am, I'll be content to eat my head, as Mr. Grimwig says in Oliver Twist.