• With Google’s Chrome OS peeking its hear around the corner for next year’s launch, everyone wants to know what this thing is going to look like. Here are two submitted screenshots posted today claiming to be the new OS. These are clearly fake, but I figured I’d pick out why this is a poor interpretation. .

1. The browser. Just because the Chrome OS is going to be a web-based operating system, does not mean Google is going to make us feel as if we are looking at our Chrome Browser 24/7 to get everything done. They will make the browser experience feel as much like a native desktop environment as possible, especially with products like Google Docs, Music Player, etc.

2. The doc. First thing to point out is the media player. Google wouldn’t go so far as to mimic the iTunes doc logo for their operating system. An image of a CD is outdated as it is, not to mention Google isn’t directly trying to step on Apple’s toes with this product launch. I highly doubt that Google will use any kind of Doc at all that reminds consumers of any kind of Mac product.

3. That massive Chrome logo underneath the browser. Microsoft or Apple have never plastered such a large permanent logo on the homescreen of any generation OS. From the looks of these screenshots, the Chrome logo will be burned into my eyes by the time I’ve finished my work day. Not.going.to.happen.

4. Dimensions, image blemishes. Besides the obvious, these images still contain some imperfections such as the magnifying glass in the search bar.

• This morning, Google posted the following on their blog, explaining their next step in the battle to take over Microsoft. Yes, it’s coming. The Google OS. Don’t get too excited yet as Microsoft plans to announce their counter attack on Monday with a similar product called Gazelle. (coming next post…)

“It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We’re excited for what’s to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer”.

• Here is the first Google commercial ever to air on TV come this weekend. The search giant wants more of the general public to know about its Chrome browser, which I still don’t use. The ads are a mix of a Current TV VC2 Ad and an Apple commercial. Once you finish the first ads, the next 3 will display below.

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• Is it just me, or did Microsoft just drop a product that is actually user-friendly? Today is the official launch of Microsoft’s latest browser, Internet Explorer 8. With its promised security enhancements, color-coded tabbed browsing and the incorporation of add-on accelerators, the full release lived up to the expectations coming out of Beta and more. Still with a 66% market share in the global browser market, Microsoft ignored many of its competitors and went their own direction in terms of an intuitive user experience. The most notable change for me is Microsoft letting users ‘reach beyond the page’ with tricks like enabling  the ’search box’ at the top right corner of the browser to display results without having to leave the page. Microsoft takes advantage of many more similar opportunities to hold strong their grip on the market. If there is one down side, it’s browser speed, but overall this is a great step in the right direction for Microsoft.
• I must disclose, even with the launch of IE8, Apple’s new Safari and Google Chrome, I will still be staying with my trusty Firefox.

• Apple today announced the public beta of Safari 4, the “world’s” fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. The most innovative additions to the browser include: Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.
• “Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”
• Safari 4 is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.*
• Apple is leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 for an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.
• Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPod touch are all built on Apple’s WebKit, the world’s fastest and most advanced browser engine. Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world’s best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry’s newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.

• • Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:
  • Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
  • Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they’ve seen before;
  • Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes®;
  • Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
  • Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;
  • Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
  • Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text;
  • built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and
  • a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.

Pricing & Availability
Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.

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• More bad news for Microsoft since rumors of the 15,000 potential layoffs coming next month.
• Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s famed browser continues to lose market share. Stats from NetApplications in November shows that while IE fell below 70% dominance for the first time ever, Firefox grew beyond 20% market share for their first time.
• As we saw earlier this morning with Google’s Android for Netbooks, Chrome will certainly begin to chip away at IE as well. Apple’s Safari standard and mobile browser will continue to grow with Apple’s growth in the computer and mobile markets.

• Mozilla Corp, maker of the Firefox Web Browser is becoming displeased with their current relationship with Google.
• John Lilly, Mozilla’s CEO, said in an interview last week, “We have a fine and reasonable relationship, but I’d be lying if I said that things weren’t more complicated than they used to be.” (CW)
• What’s causing this animosity? Google’s own browser, Chrome, which is slowly gaining a share in the booming browser market. The interesting part of the newly competitive relationship is that Mozilla makes the bulk of their revenue from Google, not to mention brings in a nice chunk of change every year for the search giant. 88%, or about $60 million of Mozilla’s 2007 revenues came from Google. Google pays Mozilla for placement as the default search in Firefox as well as powers the search for Firefox’s homepage (they share the ad revenue)
• What will Mozilla do? Well, even with the launch of Chrome, Firefox has seen a 24% increase in users since the beginning of the year. Currently 1 in 5 people are using the browser. Firefox only cooperates with Google so that it can provide its users with the best possible search experience and the most relevant ads. Looking towards the future and further competition from Google, Mozilla said they plan to explore other search revenue partners, starting with international country-specific firms first, such as Ramblr in Russia, Baidu in China, Yahooo in Japan, etc. When asked about searching for revenues outside of the standard web, Lilly said that 2009 will be the year which Firefox makes its strong entrance into the mobile browser market (Fennec is the name of the mobile browser).
• Mozilla will do what it takes to compete with Google. There is no end in near sight to their relationship, but by no means will they retreat. Should Mozilla ditch Google sooner than later?

• EMG Technology, a Los Angeles based company, filed a patent lawsuit against Apple last week over “the way the iPhone navigates the Internet”. The lawsuit seemed frivolous at first and now there is more information coming out to support that it may indeed just be.
• Why is the lawsuit shady? Well, EMG Technology formed very recently and it seems to be solely on the purpose of filing this lawsuit. The patent was just issued to them last month by a court in the Eastern District of Texas and the company doesn’t do anything besides own this patent.
• Another fact that smells fishy is that one of the inventors named on the patent and who is one of the founding memebrs of EMG is Elliot Gottfurcht, a LA based real estate developer. Don’t you mean web developer? Hmmm.
• This would certainly be the first real estate developer to be added to the list of potential owners to the Apple technology. Others include IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
• Lastly, the patent itself does not seem like it stands a chance in court, considering it is not specific to mobile browsers. Moreover, there are many way in which to develop a way to manipulate the way content is viewed, and the patent does not include enough specifics as to how exactly Apple copied what they patented.
• The claim says that the EMG patent describes the ability to manipulate, zoom, scroll, and view Web content on devices other than a laptop. The central concept revolves around a way to convert HTML Web pages into XML data that can then be displayed partially on different devices, including mobile phones. This is not something proprietary and is a joke that it was able to make it through the patent process. Nonetheless, just because the court made a mistake issuing it and EMG got lucky, doesn’t mean they will see a dime from it.
• Take a hike Gottfurcht

Photo (TechLuver)

• Mozilla has released a free alpha build (Mac, Linux & Windows) of Fennec, their Firefox-for-mobile web browser.
• Supports touch-screen commands such as swiping left and right to pull up menus and browser tabs in the sidebar.
• Features Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar,” the URL bar that presents a drop down menu based on the first letters you type that displays links to matching bookmarks and past visited sites.
• Bookmarking supports folders and tags.
• Plugins are supported as well as extensions, the user-mod feature that has made Firefox so popular.
• Go here for screenshots and a video walkthru on a Nokia N810.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall in Skyfire’s office today.

Lifehacker

• Flock, the social networking web browser, has released version 2.0.
• Interact with major socnets from Flock’s “People” sidebar.
• MySpace support now included, along with support for Media RSS which lets you stream Flickr photos, Digg stories, etc on Flock’s media bar.
• MyWorld is Flock’s startpage, bringing together your feeds, friend activity and media streams.

Mashable

• ReframeIt is a browser plug-in for Firefox or Internet Explorer that lets you highlight passages of text on a Web page and add your own comments in a side pane.
• The idea is identical to DotSpots, and the reason why it won’t work besides stiff competition is that comments left by people using ReFframeIt are only visible to other people who have added Reframe It to their browsers.
• People comment to engage in conversation, not for personal gratification. The way one of these services will succeed aside from mass adoption, is to figure out a way to display all the comments left from the story you are reading and any other relevant story on the web, enabling you to leave comments wherevere or replys to whomever. 
• The company has raised $700,000 from AD Gilhart & Co

• Israeli startup, Gigya, takes in $11m series C from DAG venture, and returning investors Benchmark Capital, First Round Capital, and Mayfield Fund.
• Gigya focuses on two areas: 
  • Widget distribution platform and advertising network. 
  • Socialize. Their plug-in that allows any site to integrate social networking features. 

• Hot on the heels of our Skyfire article last week, the Skyfire team asked us to release some beta invites to the tinyCrunch loyals.
• Email us at Editor(AT)tinycrunch.com for the code. First to come, get served.

• SemantiFind is a new firefox plug-in that semantically organizes, reorders, and categorizes your Google search results.
• The service looks and performs very close to Google Suggest, but with human relevancy reccomendations.
• The plug-in helps most with searches that confuse Google because that term spreads across many different categories. SemantiFind displays all potential search results in the suggestion box and places a category next to each result.
  • Example: If I search for Miami Heat, it will show me one reccomendation that is categorized as Sports and one that is categorized as Weather.
• Easily delete results from their reccomendations, and never have to see them again.

SemantiFind, we get it and its sounds cool. But What’s your plan to scale this business up and why are you more than a feature that can be invented by Google tonight? We will ask the founders and get back to you.

Made tiny from: ReadWriteWeb

• If so, here are eight extensions sure to better your Google reading experience.

Made tiny from: Mashable.com original post