In the wake of Google’s big announcement last week on Chrome OS, its netbook-focused operating system due to launch in late 2010, speculation is building as to what sort of response it may draw from the competition, especially Microsoft. Given that Google’s idea is to put a browser-centric look and architecture at the heart of its cloud-focused operating system, PC World thinks Redmond could respond with a so-called “Internet Explorer OS.” Meanwhile, InfoWorld imagines a scenario in which Microsoft conducts a full-frontal attack that starts with classifying Chrome OS as “desktop Linux” (Canonical, which makes the Linux distribution Ubuntu, has been helping Chrome OS take shape). In fact, Microsoft is unlikely to go on the attack at all.

First of all, Chrome OS is aimed solely at the netbook market, and it won’t arrive until late 2010, at which point Windows 7’s hold on the netbook market will have been building for a year. Google’s operating system, remember, is not targeting the desktop and server systems that represent the lion’s share part of Windows’ installed base.

Second, Microsoft is much less inclined to blast Linux and all things Linux-based than it used to be. Sure it has done so in the past, with Steve Ballmer even going so far as calling Linux “a cancer.” There are even those who produce alleged evidence that Microsoft trains Best Buy employees to trash Linux. But Linux doesn’t have enough market share for Microsoft to launch continuing, broad-based attacks on it, nor is it in the company’s best interest to do so. After all, if Microsoft can’t point to competitors to its operating systems, it risks getting back in trouble with the Department of Justice. In fact, Microsoft recently donated significant amounts of driver code to the Linux community — something it would never have done years ago.

Finally, as I wrote recently, Google is taking a number of large gambles with Chrome OS. It will work only with data in the cloud, for example, which may not be flexible enough for many users. Before we envision Microsoft fearing Google’s narrowcasted and possibly quite inflexible OS, Google has to prove that it can get an operating system aimed at computers (and not mobile phones) right — and support it well.  Those are tall orders, as Microsoft (and Apple) would be the first to point out.

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Posted by Sebastian Rupley on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  17 Comments
Tags: chrome os, google, Linux, Microsoft

Google this week expanded its coupon service to mobile just in time for Black Friday, enabling U.S. consumers to access and redeem the discounts via their phones. It’s an effort that could give the space a much-needed shove into the mainstream.

Retailers can now create and upload mobile coupon offers to Google’s Local Business Center; the offers are presented with business listings to users searching Google.com on a handset. The move expands on a 2-year-old service that enables users to access coupons on the Internet and print them out.

Mobile coupons have been around for several years but have failed to gain much traction with consumers. Startups such as Cellfire and txtwire have launched promotions with nationally known retailers, but no campaign has enjoyed the marketing support necessary for large-scale success, and consumer awareness remains limited.

Google’s new offering could change that if enough retailers buy in and present their offers to consumers. While existing startups in the space must ink deals with individual retail partners, Google’s massive list of businesses could boost consumer awareness as users increasingly use their phones to find local retailers. While Google’s effort is unlikely to provide the overnight breakthrough many in the space have long hoped for, it could go a long way toward bringing mobile coupons to the mass market.

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My Early Black Friday Deal Arrived — Panasonic HDC-SD10 jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel "; 10 Things to Be Thankful For in Greentech Earth2Tech – by Josie Garthwaite "; NewTeeVee Re-Run: Paul McCartney Cooks Mashed Potatoes NewTeeVee – by Chris Albrecht "; Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque ";

Posted by Colin Gibbs on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments
Tags: google, Mobile Advertising, mobile coupons, mobile marketing

Google today launched its popular Google Maps Navigation (beta) for older devices that use Android OS version 1.6 or higher. It debuted as a free feature on Android 2.0 (Droid) handsets a few weeks ago and was received with much enthusiasm. Now devices such as the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the G1 will be able to use the Internet-connected navigation system that offers voice-based guidance and automatic routing. “This release also includes the new Layers feature, which lets you overlay geographical information on the map. View My Maps, transit lines, Wikipedia articles about places, and more,” Google notes on its blog. Since I don’t drive, this system isn’t of much use to me. But I have seen some friends use it, and it’s pretty darn good — enough so to cause a long-term migraine for others in the dedicated GPS business. (Related post: “With Maps Navigation, Google Fires Another Shot at Carriers”)

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  3 Comments
Tags: Android, droid, google, GPS, Location Based Services, TomTom

Matt Cutts, a software engineer and an eloquent corporate spokesman for Google, spoke at PubCon earlier this month and later gave a video interview to Web Pro News, in which he said that the speed at which web pages are available might become a factor in SEO moving into 2010. He said that because many within Google consider fastness to be vital to the web, the company is considering making web site speed a factor in calculating page rankings. Those comments have confused and scared many folks as to how speed might impact their businesses.

To be sure, Cutts’ comments don’t offer any details, and it is not even clear if  Google will go down that route. (Matt, can you offer clarifications please?) Still, some are worried that Google is going to turn PageRank into a country club for the rich, and penalize smaller sites because they don’t have high-end hosting facilities. Of course, there is the uneven distribution of backbone connectivity. Many parts of the world are not as well-connected as, say, Asia or the United States, so does that mean this new approach to PageRank could penalize sites hosted in places that don’t have abundant connectivity?

Ken Godskind, chief strategy officer of AlertSite, a web site traffic monitoring service, thinks such a move could have a serious impact on many web sites. “The potential changes at Google mean there will be a REAL business impact for poor web site performance, and conversely, in Google’s words, a bonus for good performance,” he writes on the company blog. “Online organizations will need to look closely at themselves and the other parties that participate in the Web application delivery supply chain to understand and manage this new development in 2010.”

On a personal level, I believe that a faster web is good for everyone.  At some point in our web journeys we have all cursed slow-loading sites, a problem that is only going to increase as the web becomes more intricately intertwined, in the process becoming a patchwork quilt of diverse  services. Performance hiccups at one service can send out ripples of disruption.

Increasingly popular widgets can slow down the performance of even the best web offerings, thus lowering the overall experience. The increased interdependency of various services can often cause disruption. Hours after the news of Michael Jackson’s death spread on the web, many news sites became inaccessible and suffered slowdowns. Those sites didn’t crash but instead were hampered because they were pulling data from ad servers that weren’t prepared for the onslaught of traffic. On our own sites, we have seen things break down when one of our partners suffers an outage or has performance problems.

As a consumer of information, I would say Google giving preference to faster sites doesn’t seem like a bad idea. As a publisher, the high cost of speeding up my web offerings might hurt in the short term, but ultimately it means a better experience for my readers — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Photo of Matt Cutts at Pubcon 2009 courtesy of PlanetC1 via Flickr

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  29 Comments
Tags: google, Matt Cutts, PageRanks

AdMob, a mobile advertising network, which has been releasing mobile metrics for a while now and touting the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch metrics as headlines, is instead focusing on RIM, Symbian, Android and even Windows Mobile devices in its October 2009 mobile metrics report. I guess when you are soon going to be part of Google, why give arch-nemesis, Apple and its iPhone any airtime. AdMob is in the process of being acquired by Google for $750 million. The report has some interesting facts about Android and gives a rough breakdown on the success (or lack there of) of various different Android devices. As always, the data from AdMob which serves display and text ads on 15,000 mobile websites and applications, is limited in scope but is broad enough to be a barometer for the larger market trends.

• HTC has taken an early lead, thanks to availability of three different devices.
• Motorola Droid launched on November 6 already represented 24 percent of all Android requests in AdMob’s network worldwide even though the device is available only in the US.
• Worldwide requests from Android devices increased 5.8 times since April 2009 in the AdMob network.
• In the US, Android has 20 percent share of smartphone traffic versus 7 percent in April 2009.
• The Motorola CLIQ generated 6% of Android traffic worldwide as on November 18th 2009.
• Worldwide requests from RIM devices increased 44 percent over the last six months in the AdMob network.

Just to be sure, AdMob does include data about iPhone in its report. the iPhone and iPod Touch collectively accounted for about 33 percent of total requests up 6.9 percent for the month. In US, the total share of Apple is about 35 percent, up 7.5 percent for the month.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  6 Comments
Tags: AdMob, Android, Apple, google, RIM

The Internet is abuzz over Google’s release of the open-source version of its Chrome OS, and for good reason. It’s free, which will save hardware manufacturers licensing fees, and it appears ideally suited for the netbooks that have become such a hot item for the mobile crowd (GigaOM Pro, sub. required). But Chrome is not without its detractors, and it’s worth remembering that Google isn’t King Midas — in fact, there’s a substantial list of Google products and services that have flopped, floundered or simply disappeared into the ether. Here are a few of the most memorable:

• Google Lively was a web-based virtual environment that allowed as many as 20 people to sit in a virtual room and chat with each other. The offering debuted in July 2008 only to have Google pull the plug a mere four months later.
• Google Print Ads was dropped earlier this year after the company’s vision of bringing web-like automation to the world of traditional media failed to materialize. The effort went belly-up just three weeks before the death of Google Audio Ads, which ended a three-year run in February after the company failed to gain traction in the radio ad game.
• Google Answers spent a year in beta before a full-blown launch in May 2003, but the effort to create a fee-based knowledge market never gained much traction outside a small base of users and the service was dropped in late 2006.
• The social networking site Orkut launched early in 2004 as an independent project of noted Google developer Orkut Büyükkökten and has caught fire in Brazil, a market that accounts for roughly 50 percent of its membership. The site reportedly claims roughly 100 million users, which is impressive, but Google can’t be happy that its effort is virtually unknown in Europe and North America while Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others have gained such impressive traction.
• Google Catalog Search debuted in 2001 as a way for consumers to go online to check out their favorite print catalogs that had been scanned and uploaded. Of course, retailers were already taking their inventories online themselves, and the effort was put to rest earlier this year.
• Google Health was released as a beta test in May 2008, but the service has yet to find much of an audience among insurers or the general public. Which may have something to do with the combination of the words “health” and “beta test.”
• The location-based service Dodgeball was shut down in 2009 after Google had acquired it four years earlier, and while Google continues to operate Jaiku – a social networking service it picked up in 2007 — the company has effectively abandoned the project. The technologies and expertise from both startups is being incorporated into other Google businesses and projects, however.

No company bats 1.000, of course, and a company as experimental and entrepreneurial as Google is bound to have its share of failures. As the blogosphere gushes over Chrome, though, Google’s stumbles help provide some perspective. Are there any other names that should be on this list?

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Posted by Colin Gibbs on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  22 Comments
Tags: chrome, Dodgeball, google, Google Answers, Google Catalog Search, Google Chrome, Google Health, Google Lively, Google Print Ads, Orkut

You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it.

Next year, Google will introduce one of its most ambitious projects yet: Chrome OS (GigaOM Pro, subscription req’d). There are quite a few misconceptions going around about the new operating system, among them that it’s aimed squarely at Microsoft’s operating system hegemony. It’s not. Chrome OS is targeting netbooks, not desktop and server systems. Still, the operating system includes some bold gambles from Google. Here are four of them.

Return of the thin client. Take a look at this CNet news story, which reports that  “Oracle’s Larry Ellison today resurrected the company that designs a scaled-down desktop system — known generically as the network computer — and announced plans to ship new models in the first quarter of next year.” But note the date: 1999, not 2009. Indeed, Ellison was championing thin clients — computers with few local hardware resources that would get applications and data out on a network — back in the late 1990s.

It was an idea that was subsequently tried many times, and failed. Yet fast-forward to today, and Google’s Chrome OS is placing the very same bet. As company officials noted yesterday: “In Chrome OS, every application is a web application. Users don’t have to install applications. All data in Chrome OS is in the cloud.” Chrome OS netbooks will be thin clients.

All data in the cloud? Many of the smartest people predicting the future of cloud computing are noting that companies want to deploy hybrid public and private cloud applications, namely because they don’t want to have all of their data on a remote network, with little control over it and the potential for lock-in and losses. However, Google’s Chrome OS is a bet that consumer and business netbook buyers will be perfectly happy to trust everything to the cloud. There won’t even be hard disks on Chrome OS netbooks — only solid-state drives. Will users accept such an absolutist model?

Poof goes the OS. Chrome OS is architecturally very different from other operating systems, bypassing many types of boot processes and others in order to optimize performance. Additionally, however, the OS will actually reimage itself if malware is detected. If Google pulls this off, Chrome OS systems may be free of the guaranteed performance decay that Windows systems tend to have over time. Still, users may be wary about an operating system that’s ready to exit stage left at any given moment.

Drivers? Support? Fuhgeddaboudit. Have you ever called Google for Google Docs support? I haven’t either, even though I use the applications. When you release an operating system, though, if it reaches a large audience, that audience is going to want support. Just ask Microsoft, which spent years trying to effectively support and patch Windows Vista.

In addition to excellent support, which I don’t think of as Google’s specialty, users of Chrome OS are going to want their netbooks to work seamlessly and instantly with their printers, digital cameras, smartphones and more. Chrome OS isn’t being built from scratch. It’s Linux-based (the Ubuntu team at Canonical has been helping it take shape), so Google can get a headstart by incorporating existing driver libraries and the like.  But Microsoft spent years trying to catch up to Apple in terms of automatic hardware detection and installation with its Plug-and-Play initiative, and Apple users will tell you that it never quite succeeded. Is Google about to find out what a huge headache it can be to support an operating system? History argues that will be the case.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Chrome OS will be one of the most interesting tech stories to watch next year. In many ways, though, it’s a Hail Mary.

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Posted by Sebastian Rupley on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  36 Comments
Tags: chrome, chrome os, Cloud Computing, google, google docs, operating systems

Chrome OS is a natural evolution of the work that’s been done on the Chrome browser, Sundar Pichai, VP of product management, and Chrome OS engineering director Matthew Papakipos said when they unveiled it at Google’s Mountain View campus on Thursday. The operating system is designed to imbue web applications with the “full functionality of desktop applications.” As for the reasons behind the development of the new platform, they pointed to rapid growth in the netbook market — where Chrome OS is aimed — and cloud computing.

Goals

With Chrome OS, Google had three goals, according to Pichai: speed, simplicity and security. ”Chrome on Chrome OS will be even faster than Chrome [the existing browser],” he noted. “In Chrome OS, every application is a web application. Users don’t have to install applications. All data in Chrome OS is in the cloud. If a user loses a Chrome OS machine, the user should be able to log back into the cloud and retrieve cached data.” Pichai also demonstrated that Chrome OS loads in only a few seconds.

The demonstrations made clear that the OS relies heavily on “panels,” pop-up windows housing web-based applications that are similar to multiple open windows in a browser.  Papakipos, meanwhile, characterized the security model in Chrome OS as very much like the one in the Chrome browser, and unlike the one in standard operating systems: If malware is detected, all cached data is saved; Chrome OS is subsequently re-downloaded, then freshly imaged on a machine. If an application crashes in a tab, only that tab goes down.

Coming to Devices Next Year

The target date for delivery of Chrome OS machines is the end of next year. Google is working with hardware partners to bring Chrome OS to market, Pichai said, and doing so in unusual ways. Chrome OS is not aimed at hard disk-enabled machines, for example, but rather at systems with solid-state drives. Google is also working with hardware vendors on what Pichai described as “slightly larger netbooks,” with full-sized keyboards and large displays. All the open source code is available today, as are all the design documents, said Papakipos.  You can find the source code for the OS and other links here.

So does Chrome OS have a fighting chance in the hot netbook market that it’s squarely aimed at, given that it won’t make its debut on devices until late next year? Chrome OS will run on both x86 and ARM processors, which as jkOnTheRun has noted, will give it a broad spectrum of coverage on devices, and could make it a significant player in the emerging ARM-based smartbook hardware category. Still, the OS will significantly trail the arrival of Microsoft’s Windows 7, which is also squarely aimed at netbooks.

Even though netbooks have already been exploring new low-priced territory for portable computers, Chrome OS-based netbooks could also take prices much lower. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in July that “we do not plan to charge for it, in an open source form,” but that “there may be other ways we can make money from it.” He added that:

“The rough argument is we do things that are strategic because they get people to ultimately use the Internet in a clever and new way. We know that if they use the Internet more, they search more, watch more on YouTube, and we then know that our advertising [will reach them]. We do not require each and every project to be completely profitable or not profitable — we look at them in a strategic context: are they making the web a better place?”

Could Google subsidize Chrome OS-based netbooks in an effort to attract users with low prices and feed them into its search-and-advertising ecosysytem? As is true for most of Google’s projects, feeding that lucrative ecosystem tends to be a high priority for the company. It will no doubt be one as Chrome OS makes its way into devices next year.

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Posted by Sebastian Rupley on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  13 Comments
Tags: chrome os, google, netbooks, operating systems, windows 7

Vevo, the premium music video site developed by major labels Universal and Sony in conjunction with Google, said this afternoon that it will launch its service on Dec. 8th. The news comes less than a day after another major label, EMI, began using Hulu as a distribution channel for high-quality videos. Neither EMI nor Warner Music Group, the fourth major, has reached a deal to participate in Vevo’s launch yet.

While Vevo is often touted as a “Hulu for music,” a premium alternative to YouTube’s comparatively lo-fi music video offerings, it may find itself competing for consumers’ attention with both Hulu and YouTube, as well as MTV and MySpace. Google-owned YouTube is already many people’s first option for streaming music, whether they’re interested in the video element or not, and it may continue to be a “good enough” option for many music fans. What’s more, any new music service that launches without all four majors on board is necessarily handicapped by a library of content that won’t satisfy user searches, all the more so if it’s lacking independent label content as well. (YouTube was missing Warner Music’s songs for several months after a royalty spat, but the two settled in September.)

In theory, the labels and Google can reap greater advertising revenues from a higher-quality music video destination site than from YouTube, where user-contributed videos (and everything else) sit side-by-side with clips distributed by record labels and other content providers. Will consumers find it as compelling as existing alternatives? We’ll find out in less than three weeks.

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Posted by Paul Bonanos on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments
Tags: google, muisi, Sony, Universal, vevo

Telecom gear vendor ZTE will step up its game in the crowded smartphone space next year with an Android-based handset, and Google is rumored to be working on its own device. But as the smartphone market continues to heat up, manufacturers are learning the hard way that the key to success in mobile phones lies in the software — not the hardware.

Handset manufacturers are increasingly being elbowed out of the way as carriers embrace developers of operating systems and the apps that run on top of them. Motorola, for instance, is an afterthought in Verizon’s big-budget campaign in support of its Droid initiative, and HTC’s brand is nowhere to be found in T-Mobile’s recent commercial pushing the MyTouch 3G. Meanwhile, Nokia continues to fare poorly in the U.S. due largely to its unwillingness to capitulate to American carriers, and smaller manufacturers like Sony Ericsson are becoming irrelevant as they lose market share.

Two phone makers are bucking the trend, though, and they’re doing it by churning out handsets based on their own operating systems. Apple’s iPhone has become an iconic device thanks largely to its intuitive user interface and knockout browser, while Research In Motion continues to gain traction — and mind share — with its BlackBerry, an enterprise-focused handset with software that stresses functionality over fun. Both Apple and RIM are backing their hardware with ad campaigns that put the manufacturer — not the carrier — in front of consumers.

HTC is fighting back with its impressive “You” television commercials, which tout the phone’s Sense user interface and promotes the device’s personalization features. That’s a strategy that will pay dividends as manufacturers become marginalized in mobile, and as software increasingly becomes a key differentiator in the minds of consumers.

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Posted by Colin Gibbs on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  0 Comments
Tags: google, mobile carriers, Motorola, phone manufacturers, smartphone OSes, smartphones, ZTE

ARM and more than 35 other companies have banded together to create an alliance dubbed the Solution Center for Android, which is aimed at increasing the resources available for developers trying to build for the relatively young OS on top of ARM hardware. Android, an open-source, Linux-based OS pioneered by Google, is the underlying operating system in several popular smartphones such as those from HTC and the Motorola Droid. However, as computer companies plan netbooks based on the ARM architecture (known as smartbooks), ARM and several other companies, including Texas Instruments and Mentor Graphics, determined that the Android OS needed more infrastructure to support these more complicated consumer devices.

The Solution Center will serve as a go-to place for developers to get information on development tools, as well as resources and services optimized specifically for Android on the ARM platform. The end result should be better devices that are able to get to market quickly. And because ARM is so prevalent in other consumer gadgets scattered around the home, it’s possible that the alliance will help bring Android to more devices.

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Posted by Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  4 Comments
Tags: Android, ARM, ARMH, GOOG, google, Motorola, Texas Isntruments, TXN

If you read the reviews, it becomes obvious that I am part of a small minority of folks who haven’t been blown away by the new Droid, a Google Android OS-based smartphone made by Motorola that Verizon Wireless launched Nov. 5 in the U.S. All the accolades are actually turning into smashing sales for the Droid, according to data collected by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company. How big are the sales? (Find out below the fold.)

We have been following the Droid pretty closely, and once we learned that the device had a solid (if not blockbuster) weekend, we decided to get a better grasp of the Droid-fever that seems to be spreading across the nation. Flurry, which tracks the usage of mobile applications across various platforms, ran a query at our behest to get us a clearer (if not totally accurate) picture of the Droid launch and its market penetration.

Flurry has come up with a stunning number: 250,000 Droids sold in the first week vs. 1.6 million iPhone 3GS devices sold in the first weekend. Apple said it sold over a million devices in the first weekend of the launch of iPhone 3GS, so 1.6 million is pretty close to the mark. There has been talk that nearly 200,000 units of Droid were on the shelves at the time its debut, so it is not far-fetched to peg the total sales for the week at 250,000. (Related post: “iPhone 3GS vs. Droid: How Do They Really Stack Up?”)

Flurry monitors about 10,000 apps across iPhone and Android and claims that it tracks apps on approximately two out of three unique iPhone and Android handsets. To estimate first week sales totals for the myTouch 3G, Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system, and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset. Flurry additionally cross-checked its estimates against Apple actual sales, released for the iPhone 3GS, which totaled 1 million units sold over the three days of sales, June 19-21. [Flurry statement]

If Flurry results are accurate, then Motorola and Verizon have a winner on their hands. This is the fastest-selling Android device to date. It also helps that Motorola and Verizon have budgeted $100 million to promote it. As the gadget makes it way across the world, one can expect sales of Droid to go higher. Motorola predicts it will sell a million units by the end of 2009. That works to about $100 per customer in acquisition costs for Motorola and Verizon. (Related posts: “What You Need to Know About the Droid” and “What Are the Downsides to Droid?”)

The average Android app session length is about four minutes vs. two minutes for iPhone apps, Flurry found. I believe that is because the Android apps are not as intuitive to use as the iPhone apps, but hey, that’s just me. What do I know — I don’t think Droid is that hot, and it sold a quarter million units in week one.

PS: Check out this great comment from one of our readers, Nicholas. “Currently, we are witnessing the evolution of mobile technologies past the computing paradigm of laptops, desktops and workstations, and Motorola needs a more cohesive idea of what can and will be accomplished in the mobile space,” he writes. Agreed — and that is why I find MotoBlur, the company’s communications-based interface, more interesting than its hardware. It could, with some work, become the new way of consuming large amounts of data.

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Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  58 Comments
Tags: Android, Apple, droid, google, smartphones, Verizon

Google continues to pursue its ambitious Chrome agenda, confirming it will release a beta version of the Chrome browser for Mac in the next few weeks and reportedly preparing to make the OS available via download within days. The question for on-the-go tech geeks, though, is what kind of devices  we’ll see for the downloadable OS, and when.

Google has said it’s working on Chrome OS with a host of hardware vendors including Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Toshiba. And as James noted several weeks ago (GigaOM Pro, subscription req.), the platform  is being developed specifically for the netbook segment, leveraging a bare-bones interface optimized for performance — not frills. Google said earlier this year that netbooks running the OS wouldn’t be available until the second half of 2010, but that it would open source the code for download by the end of 2009.

Despite all the hype surrounding Chrome — and the heavy-hitters teaming with Google on the project — the OS is likely to make a quiet debut and be targeted at a small number of devices. But Acer and Lenovo are rumored to be preparing to launch Chrome OS devices, Nvidia is working on Chrome OS Tegra devices, and as TechCrunch suggested, Eee PC netbooks could be endorsed by Google as Chrome-ready. If the Chrome OS’ debut comes off without a hitch, there’s a chance we could even see some hardware support for it in time for the holidays.

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My Early Black Friday Deal Arrived — Panasonic HDC-SD10 jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel "; 10 Things to Be Thankful For in Greentech Earth2Tech – by Josie Garthwaite "; NewTeeVee Re-Run: Paul McCartney Cooks Mashed Potatoes NewTeeVee – by Chris Albrecht "; Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque ";

Posted by Colin Gibbs on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  3 Comments
Tags: chrome, google, OSes

Google earlier this week said it was buying AdMob, a mobile advertising network, for $750 million in stock — clearly an attempt to get a running start in the mobile advertising business. Together, according to some estimates, the two companies control 30-40 percent of the mobile ad market.

What wasn’t said was that without AdMob, it would take a long time for Google to get thousands of apps to use its ad service as that would involve re-tweaking thousands of iPhone apps that were using AdMob’s network. Google didn’t have time for that, as CEO Eric Schmidt explained in an interview with Bloomberg:

“AdMob is clearly the best of its ilk for applications monetization…We think that’s as strategic as search monetization, which, of course, we’re very good at…One the key success points for the iPhone was this enormous development of apps, and particularly free apps, which are advertising supported…Now that we have our Android platform coming out, and really with some serious partners behind it, it will also be important to have that be true for Android as well as the others.”

Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, a marketing agency, puts it all in context:

With the acquisition of AdMob, Google now has access to usage data of many of the most popular mobile apps–especially the apps in the iTunes App Store. For iPhones. If Google is taking on Apple for mobile OS market share, they just scored a huge competitive advantage. Google will know more details than ever about how people are using iPhone apps, how they are engaging with advertising within those apps, and users’ loyalty to those apps. Dashboards like the above only provide a window into the beginning of the mining that Google is likely about to do on their mobile handset competition.

Get the complete lowdown on mobile app stores, including details on who is doing what, in this special report, which is included in the annual subscription of GigaOM Pro. Subscribe to GigaOM Pro for $79 a year, get this report.

Google has been worried sick about the rise of the app economy because it undermines its ad-based search paradigm. As Andy Abramson explained:

If your business is built on things like web based technology (search), cloud based technology (Apps) and advertising from traffic that goes to and through your search engine or when people are looking at their content in the apps, the concept of many app stores has to be very, very scary for a few reasons.

Well nothing like a bit of fear to loosen the purse strings. AdMob is Google’s second-largest advertising-related acquisition to date, behind DoubleClick, for which it paid $3.2 billion. The company also paid $1.6 billion for YouTube. Notably, Schmidt said he doesn’t view AdMob-sized deals as the norm for future deals.

Photo courtesy of Charles Haynes via Flickr.

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My Early Black Friday Deal Arrived — Panasonic HDC-SD10 jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel "; 10 Things to Be Thankful For in Greentech Earth2Tech – by Josie Garthwaite "; NewTeeVee Re-Run: Paul McCartney Cooks Mashed Potatoes NewTeeVee – by Chris Albrecht "; Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  1 Comments
Tags: Android, Apple, Eric Schmidt, google, iPhone, smartphones

Maybe we should chalk it up to the upcoming season of jolly, but lately it seems like everyone wants to give away free Wi-Fi access to travelers. Well, free as long as you watch an ad or a promo for whichever company is sponsoring it, such as Yahoo, Microsoft and now Google. But while we might roll our eyes at what looks like just another way to serve up ads, the idea of free WiFi-based marketing is actually pretty smart. Among the current offers:

• Starting today, visitors to Times Square in New York City will be able to get free Wi-Fi on their computers and mobile phones, courtesy of Yahoo. If you log in from your mobile phone, it is going to take you to http://m.yahoo.com. On a computer, you end up at a Yahoo page filled with ads.
• Google is offering free Wi-Fi access on Virgin America through Jan 15, 2010.
• eBay is sponsoring free Wi-Fi on 250 flights on Delta Airlines during the week of Thanksgiving. Wi-Fi users will get access to the eBay home page and an invitation to shop there.
• Microsoft is working with JiWire to give away free Wi-Fi in premium hotspots in hotels and airports as long as they use Bing for search via their connection.
• Google is giving away free Wi-Fi in 47 airports across the U.S., including hubs such as Miami, Seattle, Houston and San Jose, Calif. The promotions will last through Jan. 15, 2010.

Google, from the looks of it, is using Boingo Wireless’ network. The Los Angeles-based hotspot operator today announced a new sponsored access program that will allow brand advertisers to engage with Wi-Fi users.

Wi-Fi usage has been on the upswing recently, thanks to the rise of smartphones, especially the iPhone. Whether it is airports or cafes, people are increasingly logging onto Wi-Fi networks. “People are creatures of habit and one of the goals of this campaign is to open people up to new ways of finding what they are looking for on the Internet,” said Jeff Bernstein, senior vice president at UM (the agency formerly known as Universal McCann). “JiWire’s media channel serves our goal because it gives people an incentive to try Bing and let the engine speak for itself.”

Given that many of the estimated 100 million travelers who will spend time in airports with Google-sponsored Wi-Fi will at some point in time encounter Google ads, the decision is more than a nice gesture. Google providing access to free Wi-Fi is kind of like publishing those free magazines littering coffeehouses. It’s all about the ad revenue.

A typical free Wi-Fi campaign from Boingo offers travelers 15-20 minutes of complimentary Internet access in exchange for watching a 30-second video, by which the user is engaged directly with the brand. Other opportunities to engage consumers include lead generation, product and service trials, social media applications, location-based searches, customer surveys and downloadable content, Boingo noted in a press release.

Giving users something in return for their attention is a smart way to engage with an audience, which increasingly glosses over display advertising. It’s a welcome development, one that strikes a better balance between the needs of a marketeer and the end user (and potential customer).

It’s also a recognition of how important Wi-Fi is in the quest for constant connectivity, especially as more and more folks tote around WiFi-enabled smartphones. With 70 minutes spent behind the security gates at airports on average, everyone from business travelers to harried parents looking for a kid-friendly diversion can now find something online. That’s all good, but one can imagine it’s going to get a lot harder to find an empty power outlet this season.

Photo courtesy of Yahoo

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My Early Black Friday Deal Arrived — Panasonic HDC-SD10 jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel "; 10 Things to Be Thankful For in Greentech Earth2Tech – by Josie Garthwaite "; NewTeeVee Re-Run: Paul McCartney Cooks Mashed Potatoes NewTeeVee – by Chris Albrecht "; Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque ";

Posted by Om Malik & Stacey Higginbotham on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  15 Comments
Tags: Boingo Wireless, eBay, google, Microsoft, WiFi, Wireless Broadband, Yahoo

Gizmo5 founder Michael Robertson

Given that most of Google’s customers are also likely Skype users (aka web workers), it makes perfect sense for it to buy Gizmo5. The San Diego-based company recently developed OpenSky, a gateway that allows you to call Skype from any VoIP-based phone/application. As founder Michael Robertson told us at the time:

What we’ve done is create a SIP alias for every Skype user. So if you want to call a Skype user named echo123 you simply dial echo123@opensky.gizmo5.com from any SIP-aware device (which is just about every piece of VOIP equipment). Users can even have any SIP call forwarded to their Skype address using my.gizmo5.com.

This application could come in handy for Google to capture some of the Skype magic as it tries to expand into the enterprise and increase its collaboration offerings. Gizmo5 could also help Google extend its reach on mobiles and bring much-needed expertise for soft clients for voice calls.

Gizmo5 says it has 6 million users; that number is unverified. If the deal is indeed true, Robertson, who been desperately looking for an encore since his first company, MP3.com, must be thrilled. Gizmo5 has raised closed to $20 million, a majority of it coming from Robertson.

P.S.: I want to apologize to readers for writing the original post outlining that Skype had bought Gizmo5. I guess the rumors of Skype buying Gizmo5 were still swirling in my head.

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My Early Black Friday Deal Arrived — Panasonic HDC-SD10 jkOnTheRun – by Kevin C. Tofel "; 10 Things to Be Thankful For in Greentech Earth2Tech – by Josie Garthwaite "; NewTeeVee Re-Run: Paul McCartney Cooks Mashed Potatoes NewTeeVee – by Chris Albrecht "; Living by the Numbers: What Happens When You Quantify Everything? WebWorkerDaily – by Celine Roque ";

Posted by Om Malik on GigaOM  |  Permalink  |  26 Comments
Tags: gizmo5, google, skype, VoIP