Interoperability seems to be the flavor of the season. Google dubbed Facebook and Twitter and launched Buzz, an integrated social network platform for Gmail users. Intel and Nokia, who intrinsically are hardware firms, are now joining hands to create MeeGo, a new operating environment which will be powering all the future portable computing devices.

One wonders, why Intel and Nokia, leaders in their respective fields are trying to encroach upon non-core business territories. Well, if Google, a search engine giant can get into mobile manufacturing, why not Intel and Nokia. MeeGo essentially will be a Linux based operating environment, which is a combination of proprietary systems Moblin and Maemo developed by Intel and Nokia respectively. MeeGo in turn will be used for powering smart-phones, tablet PCs, netbooks, and other mobile computing devices.

Considering the fact that computing devices are increasingly communicating with each other, having a universal or device independent operating system makes a perfect sense. For example, users often find it time consuming and difficult to transfer different format music files from mobile devices to computers. Moreover, mobile devices do not support different file formats like tablet PCs (which now are in vogue). Imagine what an operating environment like MeeGo can do. No more expensive conversion software and no more format support issues from either of the devices. It would make sense to have such kind of operating environment, lest, competitors of Intel and Nokia do not come up with a similar strategy.