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Looking at Google these days we not only see a search giant but also a software company which has been built through acquisitions and internal developments. Google now boldly validates this fact with the announcement of Google Chrome OS, a lightweight open source operating system. “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects,” says Sundar Pichai, VP of Product Management at Google.

The first place we can expect to see the Google Chrome OS in action will be on netbooks, popular with business travelers, and eventually full-sized desktops. The operating system is targeted towards users who spend most of their time online. The new OS is designed to start up and launch the Web within a few seconds.

Viruses, malware, and security updates may be a thing of the past for Google Chrome OS users. “It should just work,” says Google who is “going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS.”

With Microsoft battling for ranking in the search market and Google booting into the OS market, expect to see some interesting developments in the near future.

Source: Google Blog

If you haven’t been living under a rock recently you are well aware of Microsoft’s latest foray into the search market with Bing. The latest buzz word in Web search is “real-time” lead by the constant flow of 140 character posts from the Twitter platform. Many companies have been attempting to harness this information in the form of real-time search engines. Some recent contenders include Topsy, OneRiot, CrowdEye, and now Bing.

Bing’s real-time search experiment as of right now is only indexing results for popular tweeters. It’s still unclear on how they plan on delivering these results as my own tests have been varied. For example if I search for “Al Gore” on Bing I do not see anything related to Twitter. If I search “Al Gore Twitter” I see some results at the bottom of the page. However if I search “@algore” the Twitter results are right at the top.

I tried a second test with “TechCrunch” and this time I do see tweets at the bottom of the page. “TechCrunch Twitter” delivers the results at the top of the page, as does “@techcrunch“.

Search heavyweight Google as of yet has not launched any products to index Twitter content (outside of user pages), but rumors of a Google microblogging search engine have been surfacing.

An effort to restructure MySpace into a more innovative and entrepreneurial business results in News Corp cutting 30% of the social network’s staff this week, approximately 400 employees. MySpace has seen nothing but bad news lately, traffic has been dwindling and last month the platform was dethroned as the number one social media network in the U.S. by rival Facebook.
 
“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. These layoffs have been attributed to Google’s decision to heavily downsize it’s $300 million per year advertising deal with MySpace. Sources suggest Google is looking for something closer to $50 million per year.
 
While many MySpace employees appear to be expendable as of late, including former CEO Chris DeWolfe, co-founder Tom Anderson remains on the roster, and still friends with everyone.

Google conducted a small survey in Times Square not too long ago simply asking people, “What is a browser?” The result was that less than 8% of those interviewed knew the answer. Most people responded with search engines such as Google and Yahoo but a few were on point naming Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

The interviewer later asks participants, “Have you heard of Google’s browser Chrome?” with no positive results (keep in mind this video was shot around October 2008). I’m sure most of us who work online will get a laugh out of this one, I certainly did when I saw a friend of mine in the video get tripped up as if it was a loaded question. I apologize in advance to my friend for this post, however she is the one who showed me the video!

The latest from Google Labs is a simplified data analysis and visualization tool that allows users to collaboratively develop and manage tabular data. Traditional database systems are known for containing complex SQL queries and transaction processes. Google Fusion Tables has developed a system where the “focus is on fusing data management and collaboration: merging multiple data sources, discussion of the data, querying, visualization, and Web publishing.”
 
Collaborating on large data sets has the potential to produce inaccurate results simply through process. Duplicate copies of the data can emerge where inconsistencies occur. Google Fusion Tables provides a workspace in the cloud where you can invite multiple users to collaborate. Changes made to the data are consistent and you can also select which portions of your data to share with collaborators. An attribution feature gives credit where credit is due, so you’ll know who made what changes. Discussion features allow you to carry on conversations along rows, columns, or even specific cells.
 
The most power feature is the ability to combine multiple data sets and really see the big picture; data from independent sources can be fused on a primary key. Visualization features allow you to instantly present your data on charts and maps; Google Fusion Tables will automatically interpret locations from your data. You can also apply filters to enhance and tweak your visualizations.
 
Google Fusion Tables is fresh out of the garage, so for testing purposes you are allowed to import Microsoft Excel (.xls) and Google spreadsheets, or CSV (comma-separated values) files with up to 100 MB per data set, and a max of 250 MB per user account. You can also export data to CSV files.
 
Source: Google Research Blog