Google Chrome OS: Everything in the Browser Window

Think about how little you may use your personal computer’s hard drive anymore. Unless you keep a music or video collection, or store your e-mail locally instead of using a Web-based service like Gmail, you might not use it at all.With that in mind, Google has developed Chrome OS, an operating system for laptops that does just about everything inside a browser window. As a result, forthcoming Chrome OS laptops from Asus and Samsung due later this year will be lightweight, low-maintenance and, most of all, inexpensive.  Google’s chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, has said the target price range will be $300 to $400 for a model that’s not a flimsy netbook.

I’ve got a prototype Chrome OS laptop supplied by Google, which is not available for sale. Called the Cr-48 — the name is the chemical symbol for an unstable isotope of the element Chromium — the matte-black notebook boots up Google’s Chrome browser in seven seconds, and reawakens instantly from sleep. It has no hot, spinning disk drive because it doesn’t need one to hold the small Chrome OS operating system. Sixteen gigabytes of solid-state memory do the trick.

The Cr-48 weighs less than four pounds and runs silent and cool. To stay connected to the internet, it packs both Wi-Fi and a Verizon 3G account that includes 100 megabytes per month of free data. There may be different options when the real products go on sale.

The prototype has two nice nerdy touches. One is the matte screen, rather than a glossy one, much better for reading and writing text instead of watching video. And there’s no Caps Lock key, because YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT ON THE INTERNET.

But can you really live inside a browser window all day and night? For many, the answer is yes. There are Web-based versions of just about everything these days. Plus, Google has created a Chrome Web Store full of apps that install inside its browser. Many are free. Some even work without a live Internet connection. By adopting a do-it-online mindset, you can perform just about any task as long as you’re connected.

Use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo for email. Edit and review Microsoft Office files on the company’s Office Live site, or switch to Google Docs, which should work offline by the time Chrome laptops are available. Manage your personal finances on Mint. Edit and store photos with the free Aviary Photo Editor app. Build your music library on Grooveshark, Pandora or one of many other apps. Make phone calls using Skype or Google Talk.

To upload and download personal files, you can plug a disk or thumb drive into the Cr-48’s USB jack, or pop in an SD card. Many phones will also plug in as USB drives, so you can get your pictures off your phone and upload them to Aviary, Flickr or Google’s Picasa.

What can’t you do? There’s no way to sync your phone’s contacts to Chrome OS. And for now, printing is tricky. You have to use Google’s Cloud Print service to connect to a printer plugged into another computer. HP plans to sell printers this year that will let a Chrome laptop print directly.

Compared with a Windows laptop, a Chrome OS model will offer one big advantage: price. The Windows license for a laptop can run over $100. For a $400 computer, that’s a big part of the cost. Also, the much simpler operating system is likely to be virus-free and require little maintenance. It updates itself periodically over the Internet. And there aren’t many system configuration options to mess with, reducing another source of anxiety.

For people whose sole major computing task is uploading pictures to Facebook, a low-price, browser-only laptop that can upload and download files to plug-in storage seems like a cost-effective option. Without a disk or fan, or long boot times, it’s more relaxing to use, too.

Will these things sell? I think that, like netbooks and iPads, they’ll need to go viral and become a consumer fad if potential buyers are going to overcome their doubts that they’re somehow not getting a real computer.

Source: "The New York Times"

Facebook Tops over Google as Most visited site in 2010

Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US in 2010, according to a survey by the web tracking firm Experian Hitwise.

The social networking site also claimed the top search term of the year, with variations on its name filling four of the 10 most popular searches, the survey found. In all, Facebook searches accounted for 3.48 percent of all web searches in the US in 2010, a 207-percent increase over 2009.

The study found that Facebook accounted for 8.93 cent of all US website visits in the year, ahead of Google.com's 7.19 percent and third-placed Yahoo Mail with 3.85 percent.

However if all Google's various properties are taken into account, the web search giant did overtake Facebook with 9.85 percent of all website visits. Microsoft's msn.com and bing.com also made it into the list of top ten websites, as did myspace.com.

Other terms in the top 10 searches included "youtube", "craigslist", "myspace", "ebay" and "yahoo".

Source: "NDTV"

Google new launch: Google Realtime

Google has launched Google.com/Realtime as a separate page for its Realtime Search feature that allows users to view latest search results from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The company first introduced real-time search results as a part of its general search engine in December 2009. According to Google, the Realtime Search page is rolling out in phases and should be available soon. In the meanwhile, one can use this link to try out the new features right away.
“On the new homepage you will find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify,” Dylan Casey, product manager, Google, has said. “In addition, we have added a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web... We have also added updates content to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing.”

Source: AlooTechie

 

Google unveiled a Gmail phone-calling application

Google may have generated a lot of publicity with its Aug. 25 announcement of an application that makes phone calls through Gmail, but the company is staying mum about any international expansion of the upcoming U.S.-centric service.

“We don’t have anything to announce about international roll-out today,” a Google spokesperson told eWEEK Aug. 26, “but we’re looking forward to bringing localized versions to more people in the future.”

The application requires Google’s voice and video plug-in, which can be found here. Once activated, Gmail users can click a “Call Phone” tab, opening a window with a virtual keypad. Those with a Google Voice phone number will find their Gmail calls display that number as their outbound caller ID.  

According to Google's Twitter feed, more than 1 million calls had been placed through Gmail in 24 hours. 

“We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days,” Robin Schriebman, a Google software engineer, wrote in an Aug. 25 posting on the Official Gmail Blog. “If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly—so stay tuned.”

But if Google is aiming to compete with Skype—an easy assumption, given the company’s recent acquisitions in the VOIP (voice over IP) market—then the international market will play a key factor. Skype sees its business as a global one, and the recent preliminary prospectus for its IPO suggests that a decline in volume of international calling could have a severe effect on its bottom line, the margins of which are already razor-thin. However, Skype’s base of more than 560 million registered users also makes it a formidable contender to any upstarts.

Via Gmail, calls to certain countries—including landlines in France and Britain—will cost 2 cents per minute. That represents the low end of the price scale; at the other extreme, a cost to Cuba will run you 98 cents. A complete list of rates can be found here. An international expansion would presumably make that country-to-country list exponentially more complicated.

But Skype may not be Google’s primary target.

“We assume Google’s ulterior motive is less about disrupting the telecommunications industry (it will still pay termination fees to telcos) and more about driving engagement within Gmail and its social networking activities, to better compete with social networks such as Facebook,” Goldman Sachs analyst James Mitchell wrote in an Aug. 26 research note, as reprinted on Fortune’s Website. 

But Facebook and other social networks are also looking internationally to expand their user base, which leads back to the original question: when will Google expand Gmail phone-calling offshore?  

Source: eWeek

Google Planning to Build Facebook Rival

Google is planning to build a social-networking service which could compete with Facebook. The Wall Street Journal reported.

Playdom Inc, Electronic Arts Inc. 's Playfish and Zynga Game Network Inc (company in which Google recently took a financial stake) are the top developers to with whom Google has been in discussions to offer their games on a new service Google building. 

Google's partnership with Zynga was reported earlier by the blog TechCrunch. Zynga is currently the leader in the fast-growing social gaming space with over 230 million monthly active users of its games, which include "FarmVille," "Mafia Wars" and "Treasure Isle."

Facebook growth is potential threat to Google. Over the past year, several former Google executives who ran the company's core advertising business left to work for Facebook. 

Facebook, now with over 500 million users, sells advertising on its own site. But speculation is growing that it could launch an advertising network across other sites, rivaling Google's ad network AdSense.

The Journal said Google's push into social games is an effort to capture users and advertising dollars that are increasingly flowing to social networks like Facebook.


"Google Me" might be Google's new social network.