Google hosted something of a formal “status update” on Chrome the operating system in Mountain View on Thursday. There we discovered the company is open-sourcing the code. We also found out it’s intended as a netbook OS (for now) and that Google is working with several hardware partners to create a better netbook experience (full-sized keyboard, slightly larger screen). We also learned it’s intended to be a secondary or supplemental machine, not a primary computer.

That positioning is very important.

Google Product VP Sundar Pichai wouldn’t discuss the hardware partners involved with Chrome OS during that meeting but an earlier blog post indicates many of the usual suspects are already involved: “Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

Since Thursday there’s been a steady debate on whether Chrome will succeed or fail. Much of the discussion in the room on Thursday was fairly technical: about the “stack,” the Linux kernel, security, chips, code and so on. But I want to step back from the “specs” arena and look at the Chrome/Google netbook from a consumer perspective — because that’s where it will live or die.

Several years ago people were inhibited (me included) against buying Macs because of the dominance of Windows and related Microsoft software. The general concern went to being an outsider or incompatible, literally and figuratively, with the larger network of Windows machines out there. Several things have changed all that today — the rise of the internet among them — and Microsoft no longer has that same kind of psychological “lock” on computer purchase behavior among consumers. In fact its stepped up ad campaigns against Macs and the opening of physical retail stores both reflect that.

With Chrome netbooks, Google is entering the market at a time when people are increasingly open to buying non-Windows PCs. Mac sales obviously reflect that. By contrast, Linux and various Linux derivative operating systems (i.e., Ubuntu) have never established credibility with consumers, which is why they’ve been unable able to establish a commercial foothold. As Microsoft began to defensively focus on these cheaper, smaller computers consumers equally embraced Windows netbooks because of the familiarity of the Windows brand. Windows is now the dominant OS on netbooks accordingly.

Now with Google and Chrome there is likely to be a credible alternative to Windows-based netbooks. Putting aside the rumored tablet, Apple says it can’t build a low-cost computer that will uphold its quality standards. Google apparently said on Thursday (according to later hearsay I received) that if netbook makers want to use the Google brand — as in “with Google” on Android handsets — there will be some license fee involved. However, I’ve yet to see this confirmed anywhere.

I see Chrome (the OS) and Android as quite analogous in many respects. In fact, Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin also said that Chrome and Android will likely merge or converge at some unspecified future point. (There are a number of device makers that are putting Android on tablets and netbooks.)

The Google association or explicit Google branding will be relatively important in my mind to establish the credibility of this non-Windows, non-Mac machine with consumers. A “Google PC” or “internetbook” with the Google brand attached will attract consumers, especially students and younger users. In addition, the presentation of this as a second computer will relieve some of the pressure on Chrome to do everything a Mac or Windows box can. People will judge and consider it in a different way. Accordingly it also probably won’t be very important that there’s no (Microsoft) software on the device. (iTunes might be an issue, however.)

This brings us to arguably the most important consideration of all: price.

While Macs have been able to survive as a “premium” hardware line, the rest of the PC universe is ruled by price competition. That’s especially true among netbooks. Netbooks have been the best-selling segment of the PC market during the recession — because they’re cheaper. Contrary to perceptions that everyone is buying netbooks because they’re highly mobile, NPD Group found among consumer survey respondents that 60% of netbook buyers never took them out of the house. (Of course people might move them around the house on wireless networks, which goes to portability.)

The top-selling netbooks on Amazon all come in at under $300. In addition, most of the major US wireless carriers (and those abroad) have been subsidizing netbooks with a two-year contract. In the US, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon are all selling subsidized netbooks for $199 with a two-year service contract.

Google wouldn’t discuss pricing at the Chrome event. That’s up to the hardware partners apparently. Yet Google knows that to succeed a Google/Chrome netbook will need to come in at less than $400 at the highest end and potentially around $200 to really take off. The economics of that lower price point may be very difficult to achieve. Accordingly Google & partners may need to distribute via subsidized mobile carrier relationships to bring the price down to the point where it will really get consumers’ attention. I would speculate that Verizon, given the Google-Android relationship, is almost certainly going to do this.

Google promised these devices would start appearing before the “holiday shopping season” (read: Thanksgiving) in 2010. Of course the computer must work relatively well and not be a piece of junk. But here’s what it comes down to from a consumer perspective: If Google and its partners can build a machine that costs $300 or less, that carries the Google brand and is positioned as an “on the go” internet device not intended to replace your home computer it will probably have a winner on its hands.

Mike Blumenthal received a screenshot that seems to show a test of a new presentation of Google local/geotargeted AdWords. Mike suggests this may be an expression of AdWords local extensions:

This is AdWords and not Local Listing Ads, but the presentation (with the blue pushpin) is similar, signifying a local business or a physical location. Here is an example of Local Listing Ads:

Postscript: Here’s another image from a Chicago result sent to me by Jason Normoyle:

Yahoo has enhanced its News shortcut with real-time feeds and updates. The idea is to make the News Shortcut more current and more social with Twitter content in the form of videos, photos and tweets. The new shortcut has a horizontal tabbed interface that offers access to each category of information (see screens below). According to Yahoo this is the first such integration with Twitter, although both Google and Bing are starting to integrate Twitter feeds.

The Yahoo Search Blog explains:

Starting today, you can see relevant photos, videos, and tweets about a breaking news story on the Yahoo! News Shortcut. Many of you are already familiar with the existing Yahoo! News Shortcut, which displays headlines on our Web search results page when you look for news stories. The enhanced shortcut with these new tabs will now display for many breaking or major news searches.

Images make the implementation self explanatory:

The enhanced shortcut seeks to make Yahoo Search the first place to go find the most current information on a range of news stories. Apparently there’s no comparable Yahoo News integration on the immediate horizon although it’s being considered. In terms of the “noise” that often shows up in Twitter, Yahoo is running a separate algorithm to filter the content and make sure that it’s free of irrelevant information.

When asked about whether users will take advantage of these content tabs, given that historically tabs are not widely utilized, Yahoo’s Larry Cornett told us that in user testing Yahoo was “very pleased” with the reaction to the new shortcut and its format.

News is a context in which “real-time” information makes perfect sense, unlike a range of other contexts where I may not need or want to know — right now.

According to AllThingsD the MicroHoo search deal is nearing completion and “definitive agreement” status. Speculation that the deal was in trouble started happening when the two companies failed to meet their self-imposed October 27 deadline to finalize the complex agreement. However it appears the circumstances were just as reported in the parties’ 8-K filing with the US Securities & Exchange Commission:

The Letter Agreement specified that the parties would execute Definitive Agreements by October 27, 2009, but given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized. The parties are working diligently on finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible . . .

On the regulatory front AllThingsD reports that “several sources said, those government approvals are now nearing completion at the Justice Department, even though the Federal Trade Commission might still ask for more assurances on privacy issues related to online advertising and consumer data.” Europe must also approve the deal.

According to the most recent comScore search market share data, the combined reach of MicroHoo search would be 27.9% vs. Google’s 65.4%. Assuming the deal goes through up next for Microsoft would be a decision about whether to attempt to buy Ask, which IAC’s Barry Diller is open to selling, and whether to bid for AOL’s search-ad business when that deal comes up for renewal in 2010.

However a MicroHoo approval would potentially make a later Ask acquisition (or maybe even an AOL deal) harder because it would reduce the number of independent search engines in the market.

If you’re the number four search engine in a market that is looking like it’s going to be about two (maybe three) players in the long run, what do you do? If you’re Barry Diller and running the parent company of Ask, the search engine in question, you’re potentially looking at selling, with Microsoft as a logical buyer. That’s all speculation at this point, however.

In the meantime, Ask is doing and trying a lot of things to keep users and redefine its role in this new, contracting or consolidating search landscape. Most recently it made a major push into shopping with “deals search.” Another major initiative to soon gain more momentum and visibility is something of a return to Ask’s roots as a “Q&A” engine. (The picture immediately below is circa 2001.)

Ask, which has been highlighting “answers” for some time, is going to move more directly into social search or real-time Q&A.

Ask President Doug Leeds told me the other day that Ask still gets a huge number of queries formulated as questions. In recognition of that and the more recent rise of social and “real time” search, Ask will begin to enlist its community directly in answering questions and use a number of sophisticated algorithms around question routing and identifying trustworthy and authoritative answers and people.

If well executed it could be an effective strategy for the company (including in mobile), which despite many years of innovative efforts under former CEO Jim Lanzone was not really able to grow its share beyond 4 percent of overall traffic.

Q&A services have been around for quite some time, while “social search” and “real time search” are newer phenomena. We could identify a range of companies that are in one way or another enlisting humans to answer queries or questions. Beyond Yahoo Answers, Mahalo and others like them, there are Aardvark, kgb, ChaCha, not to mention Facebook and Twitter, that fall into these categories to varying degrees. And Google recently introduced “social search” seeking to bring humans more directly into search results.

Leeds said to me that almost nobody in the segment today is going to be able to do what Ask can do with social search/Q&A “at scale.” I think that the strategy makes a great deal sense for Ask. Whether it people ultimately use it will depend entirely on execution.

Yahoo has decided to discontinue its “Go” mobile app. Go was originally part of a larger “three screen” strategy that included TV and mobile delivery of Yahoo content. The Go app was intended as a way to have a richer, self-contained experience on mobile devices. But that strategy has given way to a “Yahoo for mobile” mobile portal approach that is consistent across most high-end mobile devices — and doesn’t require an app download. Of course Yahoo also still has mobile apps for selected smartphones, including the iPhone.

In fact the “Go” experience was never really that impressive and the newer mobile web experience is very strong:

Meanwhile at Google . . . TechCrunch is emphatically repeating the GPhone rumor that first surfaced via TheStreet in late October. TC believes that the phone is real and that the handset maker is LG or Samsung:

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

So if true this will be Google’s version of the iPhone — what we always imagined the company was building before the launch of Android — but it will reportedly be “unlocked” and sold directly to the public, not through any carrier. However Google’s Android founder Andy Rubin has denied there will be a GPhone:

“We’re not making hardware,” Rubin told CNET. “We’re enabling other people to build hardware.”

Indeed, if Google were to build such a phone it would to some degree be competing with its hardware and carrier partners. There’s also the question of how much such a device would cost. In the US at least smartphones over about $200 are effectively not going to sell. Think about what happened when the iPhone’s price came dramatically down, courtesy of the AT&T subsidy, sales took off.

An unsubsidized GPhone would certainly cost more than $200 — and potentially much more. If you’re not eligible for the Sprint subsidy, for example, the Android HTC Hero in the US will cost you about $400. (I know this because I’m considering buying one.) But at the high end, such a phone could cost up to $600 or more. At $571 in the US (without a carrier subsidy) the Nokia “flagship” N97 smartphone has been a massive failure.

Google has flirted with the concept of an advertising subsidized handset in the past, at least conceptually in remarks made by CEO Eric Schmidt and others. But it would be tough to pull off in practice. MVNOs like Blyk in the UK have historically found that the appeal of “ads for minutes” programs are limited to select demographic groups (read: young and not affluent). Furthermore an ad-subsidized GPhone would potentially compromise the user experience, which is contrary to what TechCrunch claims is the objective of this device.

Indeed, TechCrunch is absolutely certain that a GPhone is coming. I hope so myself. I’m interested to see what “Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be” would be.

Many publishers have complained repeatedly that Google and Google News (not the leading online news site) reduces their content to “commodity” status or otherwise adversely impacts their brands. Google’s Fast Flip is a response to this in part.

It offers a more “branded” and visual way to consume news and magazine content from major publishers. We wrote about Fast Flip originally when it launched in Google Labs. Now Steve Rubel has found a page that looks like Google is getting ready to integrate Fast Flip into News:

It appears from the screen above that Fast Flip might replace some part of the news page below the fold. I like the concept of Fast Flip quite a bit but think it still has a way to go to be a compelling way to consume news.

We also speculated some time ago that Fast Flip might be the “platform” for the micropayments system that Google has been working on with a number of newspaper publishers. In the meantime, Fast Flip offers Google some valuable “inventory” against which it can serve contextually targeted display ads:

There’s also a mobile version of Fast Flip:

Fast Flip is a product that has the potential to make Google News different than its competitors and much more interesting than it currently is today.

Postscript: Here’s an official comment from Google:

At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on our websites all over the world. A few weeks ago we started running a few small ones exploring how we might incorporate results from Google Fast Flip, the article-reading service we launched in Google Labs in September, into Google News. From these tests we hope to learn whether including Fast Flip results in Google News would provide a good experience for users and news publishers. More information about how Google runs experiments can be found here.

You may not have known this but the Microsoft Maps experience in the UK was totally different than in the US. The former was based on multiMap, a company Microsoft acquired in 2007. Here’s what the UK experience looks like with multiMap:

Here’s what a Bing Maps version of London looks like:

The Bing version is quite a bit cleaner and more pleasing in my view. Many of the Bing Maps capabilities, such as “Birds Eye” aerial imagery, had been available through multiMap prior to this however.

Now Bing Maps proper will be available in the UK. The Bing Community blog details the changes to the mapping interface and features, including new navigation and mapping layers that can be turned on or off. Many of these improvements parallel recent upgrades made in the US to the Bing Maps interface and features.

You saw the rumors earlier in the week and we reached out to Google for confirmation of the reported Gizmo5 acquisition. But at the time they didn’t say anything. In fact they said, “We’re always talking to various companies about various things, but we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” It’s no longer speculation because Google has confirmed that it has acquired Gizmo5, “a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers.”

The estimated value of the deal is $30 million. As discussed indirectly on the Q3 Google earnings call, Gizmo5 represents one in a category of strategic “small acquisitions” that Google would be resuming, the company said.

The Gizmo5 team now joins Google Voice, enabling it to become a stand-alone phone service — like Skype. Skype is gaining momentum as an alternative to traditional telcos and wireless carriers in international calling situations. Skype has 480 million users around the world. For example, Skype with WiFi on my iPod Touch turns it into a phone. I spend $2.95 per month to make unlimited calls in the US and Canada. But I can easily switch my account online to cover Europe or the entire world for a very modest increase over that fee.

Expect a similar suite of calling plans and services to roll out from Google Voice, making the traditional telcos quite grumpy. Arguably Google has the capacity to popularize VoIP calling across networks in ways that even Skype cannot. Previously the Google Voice service required an underlying account and telephone  number from a traditional telco. Now it doesn’t need one.

When Google Voice originally launched, we asked whether Google Voice was going to become a “Next-Generation Telco?” The answer now is definitively “yes.”

One final thought: for regulatory purposes Google argulably now should be considered a telecom carrier.

The label, “TV Guide for the internet,” doesn’t fully capture the intent or the extent of Clicker. We first wrote about the site when it appeared at the TechCrunch50 event. It was then in a closed beta. However today, a mere 58 days later, the site launches to the public with a number of new features and additional content.

Former Ask CEO Jim Lanzone, now the CEO of Clicker, has described the site as “the first structured, comprehensive and unbiased programming guide for internet television.” And in today’s press release the site calls itself “Complete Programming Guide for Internet Television.”

Clicker may look like a more organized version of YouTube or a broader version of Hulu or a video search engine; and while there have been TV programming guides online, the gestalt of Clicker is something new. It both expresses where video programming is today and anticipates the “converged future.”

Increasingly people are watching movies and TV programs online. According to comScore, “more than 168 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during [September] . . . with nearly 26 billion videos viewed during the month . . .”

Clicker doesn’t compete with any of the video sites or destinations listed above; it aims to sit on top of all this content and serve as a comprehensive guide to them. Clicker also features movies, music video and made-for-Web video. Some of this content can be viewed on Clicker (if the video player is embeddable) but mostly Clicker refers people to the original sources.

Though it may not be entirely obvious, Clicker has a bright social future with a long road map of community features that will be built out over time. Imagine playlists and favorites “curated” by aficionados and experts in genres or sub-genres. And Clicker’s structured data approach provides lots and lots of information about programs and ways into content and related content:

The new features making their appearance with the public launch include:

• More content: 400,000 full episodes from over 1,200 sources in more than 1,200 categories [and] over 30,000 movies from Netflix Instant Streaming and Amazon VOD.  (Clicker also catalogs more than 50,000 music videos from over 20,000 artists.)
• Improved DVR-like Playlist functionality, including new episode alerts and full “season passes”
• Facebook Connect integration, so anyone can create a Clicker account with Facebook and/or tie their Clicker account to their Facebook profile
• User-Generated Content: fans can contribute their own thoughts, observations, and facts about any show or episode
• Search Within: The ability to restrict a search to topics within a specific program. For example, searching “Warren Buffett” within the show Charlie Rose specifically brings up those episodes where Buffett is interviewed
• Related Search: Machine-learning based suggestions on related programs. For example, 30 Rock, The Office and Larry Sanders Show are offered as related suggestions for the show Seinfeld

As mentioned above, Clicker also anticipates the coming era of the internet in the living room (on TV). As mentioned in our original post, Clicker CEO Lanzone told me that almost immediately after the demo he did at the TechCrunch50 event he was getting inquiries from the mainstream broadcasters and cable companies. Below is a “TV interface” that Clicker mocked up that could replace the kludgy cable programming guides of today.

There’s no doubt competitors will come out of the woodwork and existing companies will reposition themselves to match Clicker’s positioning and claims. However Clicker is in a very solid if not unique position to realize its ambition to be a comprehensive programming guide for video and entertainment content whether online — or on TV.