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.

What is it? Google’s answer to Twitter? Email and IM replacement? Personal communications and collaboration platform? These were questions and characterizations that emerged as Google announced Wave at the company’s May developer event in San Francisco. (Here’s a bit more context from my related post at the press conference.)

It’s a shapeshifter, a new species and something of a rorschach test for people because it crosses boundaries and isn’t easily defined.

Google Wave’s API has recently become available to developers. And now some first “hands on” impressions are out. Ben Rometsch wrote about his initial experience with Wave — “real-time email. On crack”:

Trying to describe it to my wife last night I came out with “It’s a cross between Messenger, Email and Facebook”. I still think that’s accurate, but it didn’t really help her! Once you start actually using it things slowly fall into place in your mind, but until you do so, it’s pretty hard to explain or understand.

I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s a bunch of shared IM conversations that are organised like email messages and stored on the server for time immemorial. The upshot of all this is that you can use it in a variety of different ways depending on what you want to achieve. It serves as an IM, IRC and Email server, but you can also do things that you might not necessarily first think of, such as using it as a simple Wiki with shared editing and history . . .

This is probably the most advanced ‘application in a browser’ that I’ve seen. It really does feel like a little operating system living in your browser tab. Using it suddenly makes Chrome and Chrome OS make a whole lot of sense. If you listen carefully you can hear Ballmer’s chairs flying around in the background.

I won’t make any grandiose predictions or snarky remarks. From what I’ve seen, however, at a distance it seems pretty interesting.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s founders and CEO didn’t see eye to eye on building out the Chrome browser or OS, at least, not initially.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that initially when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, brought the idea of building a browser or operating system to him six years ago, he was not interested. Schmidt said recently, “At the time, Google was a small company.” “Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn’t want to do that again,” he added. But when Schmidt saw what a Googler (previously Firefox developer) built, he was convinced it would be a “game changer.” Page also added that he and Sergey “just wore you down.”

Meanwhile, VentureBeat reports Microsoft’s Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism, Walid Abu-Hadba, calling Google’s entry into the OS market as a “defensive” play, to keep Microsoft distracted on search.

Late yesterday Google announced (or finally admitted) that it had developed an operating system, called Chrome OS, not to be confused, exactly, with the related Chrome browser. Everyone and their grandmother seems to have an opinion about it. Here’s a sampling of the reaction, positive, negative and in-between:

The fans, boosters and generally positive takes:

TechCrunch, BetaNews, Computerworld, Mashable, BuzzMachine, Ars Technica, Bloomberg, ArsTechnica, Google Watch, MediaMemo, Linux-Watch.com, Google Operating System, The Register, TheNextWeb.com, Black Web 2.0, BloggingStocks, Gadget Lab, Computerworld Blogs, ContentBlogger, Lockergnome Blog Network, About Mobility . . .

The critics and skeptics:

PC World, CNET News, Search Engine Watch,  AllThingsD, ZDNet, InformationWeek, Techdirt, Traffick, SlashGear, MacDailyNews, SmoothSpan Blog . . .

The “wait and see” or “he said/she said” pieces:

BBC, TheStreet.com, eWeek,  GigaOM, Venture Capital Dispatch, The Microsoft Blog, IntoMobile, Between the Lines, Mercury News, Seattle Times, ReadWriteWeb, TG Daily, Googling Google, New York Times . . .

And now for some verbatims:

This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that? And it’s a genius play.

–TechCrunch

If Google wants to succeed in its boldest product launch to date, the Chrome OS, the company needs to focus on its success with the same intensity it once dedicated to search.  If it doesn’t, Chrome OS will end up just like Chrome: yet another irrelevant skunkworks project used by a handful of digerati and Microsoft-haters and ignored by everyone else.

–Silicon Alley Insider

The privacy implications are, of course, horrendous. And while Google will inevitably dismiss such concerns as paranoid and argue that any data the company might collect at the OS level will be used only to improve its services and benefit users, it should still give us all pause. Because when it is finally launched, Chrome OS will be yet one more deep well of consumer data to which Google will have access

– Digital Daily

[T]his time the networks are more reliable and users are happier than ever to use networked storage and backup systems, so perhaps Chrome OS has come at just the right time. If so, then Microsoft should be worried. The network computer has been a long time coming, but with Google’s backing it could yet be the platform that finally challenges Redmond.

–The Register

It appears the top three hardware vendors have little or no relationship with the search and online advertising giant. But if Google plans to make inroads into Netbooks and eventually notebooks, that will have to change very soon. Every consumer desktop and notebook, and most Netbooks today (excluding computers from Apple) is designed to run Windows. Microsoft has deep hooks in the manufacturers’ design and engineering processes, and the hardware companies’ marketing and product launch cycles always take Microsoft’s plans into account.

–CNET

Microsoft has a number of projects in the works that I’d say are more likely to be competitors to Chrome OS than is Windows 7. The Gazelle OS-in-a-browser project from Microsoft Research is still just a research project and not in incubation or test-release form. But if Microsoft decides it has legs, they could put it on a fast track.

–All About Microsoft

If you want to read Danny’s initial take, here it is.

Postscript: Google has identified some of the companies that it’s working with on the Chrome OS initiative:

The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments.

(emphasis added)

Ars Technica posted earlier that Google is to unveil its long rumored computer operating system, and now Google confirms this is true in a blog post: Introducing the Google Chrome OS.

The company says that the OS will be released later this year (likely in the fall, I’m told) to developers, designed primarily for netbooks but not limited to them. Then in 2010, it expects it will be available to consumers (though no doubt, many enthusiasts will try it on their own machines). From the company’s post:

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.

Is this Android for computers? No, Google’s post says — explaining that though Android was designed for multiple devices, the Google Chrome OS is meant specifically for computers. We have had rumors that Google Android was coming for netbooks, such as from Acer and Dell. Google’s post says it has been talking to partners about the OS, so it seems likely some of the “Android” talk on netbooks is more about the new OS. But then again, Android IS an operating system; Chrome is not, and it seems likely Android will be morphed into a computer system. But then yet again, the post talks about using a Linux kernel that focuses with Chrome running on it. Google could be tweaking any number of Linux systems using Chrome as the primary interface.

And the Chrome name? How’s that connected with the Google Chrome browser? Google calls the OS a “natural extension” of Google Chrome. And not more than that. But Chrome is a browser; an OS is something completely different. I wouldn’t expect that this is Chrome the browser souped up but instead something entirely different.

No doubt, the announcement will put some crimp into the rollout of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system later this year. Some consumers, perhaps only a few, may decide to wait on upgrading. It definitely puts Google now going directly against Microsoft against its other major area of revenue (operating systems). Google’s already been attacking on the application front. In terms of search, Microsoft has been trying to fight against Google’s dominance with a renewed push from the Bing.com rollout.

The announcement also puts Google in further conflict with Apple. Google competes by pushing its own browser against Apple, its own phone OS against the iPhone and now an operating system. The move may also push renewed attention on the oddity of Google CEO Eric Schmidt being also on Apple’s board. The Federal Trade Commission has been already investigating whether the overlap is anti-competitive. Schmidt’s been recusing himself on discussions involving the iPhone. Will he now have to recuse himself on discussions of Mac computers in general? And if so, what use does he really play on the board?

Google, already under scrutiny for being too dominant in online advertising, might also find itself in the odd position of Microsoft by jumping into the OS space. Will regulators decide that Google cannot make its search service the default within its own OS? Will Google be forced to randomly select a search engine for searchers among major providers or force them to make a decision?

More news as it comes. See also related discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript: Google has added a FAQ page about the OS now, though at the moment, it has only two questions answered on it. Also see our round-up post, Google OS Reactions: The Positive, Negative & The Paranoid.

I’m at the Google I/O conference, where it is being opened by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

He’s welcoming the audience and saying it’s great to be in front of programmers and saying, “it’s time. it’s time for us to take advantage of the amazing opportunity before us … it has been 20 years trying to build a programming model that’s the right one.”

Internet programming is the right way. Have the network, the programmers to build the right types of opportunities out there.

Expects Android to have a strong year, thousands of apps and lots of hardware partners who are innovating to take phones that do much more.

It’s time, he says, because there’s the power to do things simply, to make them work.

There’s a new model of programming, where you can pick the best code around and mash it together. “We can take the collective intelligence of the internet … and do amazing things.”

My message to you is that this is the beginning of the real win of cloud computing, of applications, of the internet, which is changing the paradigm that we’ve all grown up with so that it just works … regardless of platform or hardware you’re using.

Next up, Vic Gundotra, VP of engineering who oversees all of mobile and many other things.

“Never underestimate the web” he says, and a lesson he learned 15 years ago when working at Microsoft. Argued then was web apps could never rival desktop ones. Keyhole was an example they used — Keyhole (later Google Earth) made software Microsoft thought could never happen as a web app. “A web app, that simply left us stunned,” after Google acquired Keyhole and added sat views to Google maps.

Yes, the web has won. It has become the dominant programming language of our time. HTML 5 standard will be covered in first half of his keynote that allow amazing thing, then in second half, things from Google itself that help.

Web platform is accelerating. New technology, browser releases, development accelerating.

“What we thought was impossible to do in the browser with JavaScript may become possible.”

Gmail was a killer app that exploited AJAX and got people using it more. “Recognize that having the capability in the underlying platform is not enough,” he said — people have to build apps that bring the tech forward

Talking about Canvas app that allows drawing with pixel level control (and I note here that much of this event for developers is going to get way beyond me).

Showing now an internal Google profiling tool that allows monitoring performance of an app to see what’s slowing stuff down. I guess this is awesome because the programmers next to me are groaning in amazement. They seem to want this thing.

Now we’re seeing an app (from someone else, Matt — sorry, didn’t catch his last name) that allows for 3D animation within a browser, 03D. The graphics look pretty cool. These are graphics, he points out, that aren’t running in a game program but instead right within the browser. The programmer next to me is so amazed that he’s either texting or twittering WOW to someone else. I’m going to depend on him as my touchstone for this weird world of programming.

For this to work well, they need common APIs to be supported by all the browsers, so Google is working with Opera, Mozilla someone else (and notably not Microsoft, an ommission that’s generating laugh) to make that happen.

Vic is back.

Canvas is available across all modern open source browsers (chart, and no Microsoft, and laughs in audience). He says he knows they noted he didn’t mention them. Said Microsoft is committed to HTML 5 open standards, said they’ll support it “and we eagerly await that” to more laughs and jokes he’s gotten past that “elephant.”

Now to video. How about a video tag as simple as image? There’s one in HTML 5. My programmer guide goes oh, that he’d want this. Vic rotates the video upside down. Programmer guy groans again.

YouTube up now as example, bouncing over thumbnails to make them play. “Oh my goodness” says programmer guy, and audience applauds. Vic said this is test, not that it will come to YouTube.

Now onto location. Google, Skyhook and others in past year are now giving really good location data, that combined with GPS allows a users location to be well pinpointed with their consent. But how do you get that in the browser? The Geolocation API allows. And now Jay Sullivan, VP of Mozilla to tell us more. Sullivan is no relation to me, if you really care. I mean hundreds of years ago, maybe we shared an ancestor. Or not. Who knows.

Vic is thanking Mozilla, which is nice because you know that Chrome is kind of designed to kill it. But the programmers are applauding the thanks, and I’m probably too cynical. Plus, Microsoft is still the evil empire that won’t be on stage, so it’s all family, right?

Jay says browser competition is heating up and so important to improve the user experience, make things faster, protect private. With no competition, things stagnate. Firefox has helped lead the modern browsers “and we’re glad these other folks are producing browsers.”

Notes each organization has its own reasons and mission to do browser. Three commonalities to all:

1) Web is the platform for the future

2) Developers need to keep having new capabilities

3) Need to not fragmenting the web (IE worrying about cross-browser incompatibilities). Strongly believes a good API that’s in 5 browsers is better than a perfect API that’s in one.

Says Firefox 3.5 is much better. Supports Canvas, video tag, geolocation. Wants video out of plugin hell. I think he said hell. You get the point.

Google Maps soon to get a “My Location” tab which he demonstrates, then laughs as it says “can’t be determined.” OK, now it’s done this. And I’m scratching my head thinking um, doesn’t Windows Microsoft Live Search Kumo But soon to be Bing already do this? Because I’m pretty sure it does and has been for over a year.

Well, maybe it will come to Firefox and work better than Google Latitude does when I try to get it to autodetect my location like last night and it said you need Gears (formerly Google Gears) and I downloaded it and it failed to do anything and I was annoyed now there’s a run-on sentence.

And that’s it on geolocation. I gather it’ll make things easier for developers to pull in geolocation data into their web apps.

Hey, speaking of Latitude, here it’s being demoed. Latitude on the iPhone! Frigging finally. And in the browser. And this is possible because they can build apps there. This will be there when Apple releases 3.0 for iPhone. But then you also think hmm, hey Google-Apple, since you’re all buddy buddy on the board level, can we just have an app for Latitude. I mean, isn’t it all, there’s an app for that? But demonstrates how even if there isn’t, as with Gmail on the iPhone, Google needn’t depend on the App Store.

Just noticed that Tim O’Reilly has posted a summary of the keynote that hasn’t even ended. So he had an early look. And it’s great, lots of links and annotations. Check it out! And side note, while down at D, it’s all about the thin client Web 3.0 vision (and Google having nil presence at that show), Google’s doing I/O theme all about it’s not thin client mobile but HTML 5 / IE it’s all about the web browser, baby. Call it Web 2.0 on steroids, maybe. Hmm, makes you wonder if there was some conflict.

Now Vic’s showing how web apps can work for keeping track of stuff when you’re offline, including an HTML web app that runs on Android that allows offline email composing.

Now someone is demoing an accelerometer in a web app, which I think sounds cool like if I were going to throw my laptop. But developer guy seems not impressed.

Vic is back with slide “I wil not host the browser with JavasScript” written over and over Bart Simpson-style on a blackboard, making people laugh and me think hmm maybe I should have learned programming. In BASIC, I can make my name appear on a screen over and over. Or a girl’s name, which was handy in 5th grade when we loaded programs on tape.

Anyway, there’s a Web Workers thing in HTML 5 which lets things run in the background and not hurt each other if they don’t play nice. He’s showing a video of someone walking, JavaScript is then mapping her movement by detecting her motion in the video. Little boxes hover over where she walks. (programmer guy, whoa, whoa). These things happen at the same time.

And that’s it about HTML 5. And I’m wishing Google would have developed that power through the air things, but I still have half my remaining batter. Time for how Google can help. Brain implant time. Help, they’re coming for us…..

Just joking. Talking Google App Engine, which someone new is saying let programmers “leave the servers to us.” With App Engine, no need to worry about configuration, usage spikes, rescaling your app if it gets popular. See, Twitter should have been built on App Engine.

Says White House used Google Moderator, which uses App Engine, which handled the load just fine. As long as Google doesn’t mark the web as malware or send traffic through Asia. But c’mon, those only happened for an hour or so. Be nice!

Now Java language support. Developers have dived in to get Java framework going with App Engine but also a lot of acroynms that sound like bark bark bark Java bark bark PHP to me. And next step on App Engine….

Opening sign-ups on App Engine to create a Java app right now. Applause, developers seem happy.

MG Siegler over at TechCrunch is also live blogging, by the way, complete with bulletpoints. While something completely uncomprehensible is now happening on stage, I’m taking a moment to link over to him. And:

• I could
• do bulletpoints
• if I wanted

OK, so the guy has made an app in Java, tested in the browser, and is now uploading it to app engine. I’m pondering handing my laptop to programmer guy but it’s so hot that’s burning my lap because Apple despite complaints for years can’t see to vent heat from their laptops. But that’s OK, because HTML 5 is coming.

OK, his app is on the web, the one he did in Java, with no server configuration, and there’s applause. I think the programming folks like the stuff.

Two features coming in Google Web Toolkit. Despite HTML 5 “sanity,” still will need to do cross-browser stuff. So GWT allows for browser-proof apps. And in next version, you can debug in the browser — any browser (even those from the evil empire. No, the other evil empire).

Now talking about runAsync  for GWT 2.0. Allows some code to download in background after user is busy doing something else in the program. Helps apps load more quickly. Decreases the initial download size for apps by 7X. Takeaway to me: push a small app out that won’t scare people with its size, then it grows up as it gets used.

Vic’s back, Google Product APIs is up. Announced they’ve crossed the 4 billion API threshold, coming in every day for Google. Thanks for support and says now everyone has to pay 1 cent per call. Heh — no, just joking.

But says they asked if they could make any Google app embeddable like AdSense. So now we’ve got DeWitt Clinton up (hey DeWitt). Google Web Elements is new product. Copy and past website content. Hey — didn’t Yahoo just do this last year? I’ll have to look later.

He’s showing news elements, how he pulls news content over to past into the page. Now he’d getting a map and pasting it (can’t I do this already within Google maps?). And now he’s pasting Google Custom Search with a code snippet.

Now he’s making it social, with Google Conversation Element, post comments, video. Not sure what that uses — do you have to have a Google Account/Profile to comment?

Is it just me, or do all the iframes this uses make me nervous. I’m sure it’s just me. I’m sure iframes are all safe.

Android time! Vic says 10 caried in 12 countries and 4,9000 apps in markete; 40+ app downloads per users.

Romain Guy, software engineer, now up to show sneak peek. Click on home screen, type, finds the right app or brings up web results. But thought search UI could work as a brand new launcher — if you click a search results, system remembers this, and more you use Android, you get prepopulated results / apps.

Now the device is being shown translating text from one language to another. All in the right accents, he says. Of course, Google Voice Search still doesn’t support British English, so we’ll see.

Oh, this is neat. Want to filter your contacts or find a song. Draw a letter on the screen with your finger, and it filters that way.

Vic is back! It’s summary time, which is good as my battery is low. And programmer guy has just jumped up and left, leaving me without a grunting guide.

Three more things:

1) Android Developer Challenge 2 is coming, http://code.google.com/android/adc

2) Everyone at the conference is getting an Android phone to help them develop. Marketshare just increases by 4,000.

3) With SIM with unlimited 3G data and thousands of hours of voice data for 30 days.

He says tomorrow’s keynote will have lots of stuff that’s not been announced and that he thinks is amazing.

And we’re done. Thanks for tuning in.

For related stories, see Techmeme. Google also has some links and resources here plus a blog post. And as mentioned above, see coverage also from TechCrunch and O’Reilly Radar.

It used to be common wisdom that Google never did consumer marketing. That’s changed over the past few years, with Google doing everything from billboards to radio ads to bus “wraps” to push particular Google products. Now it boldly goes into that final frontier, TV ads in the United States.

It’s a first for Google. The company has never directly advertised one of its products on television in the US, though they have been mentioned in conjunction with ads from Google partners, such as T-Mobile pushing its “G1 with Google” Android phone.

Now, Google’s using TV to promote its Chrome browser, as it has announced on its official Google Blog. The company won’t tell me how much it’s spending but stressed the amount is very small. Ads are being placed through Google’s own Google TV Ads network. That system allows advertisers to purchase remnant ad space on a variety of television networks.

Even a small buy might be reassuring to some of the traditional content owners who view Google as somehow sucking the advertising life out of their businesses. Google, which makes virtually all of its money off advertising still hardly seems to spend at all on traditional ads. A television buy might be taken as a sign by some that the Big G is looking to put back into the advertising ecosystem out of its own pocket.

Below is the ad that will be running — which, sorry to say, is pretty terrible to me. I mean, it’s cute — but if you don’t know Google Chrome is a browser, a replacement for Interent Explorer, I doubt most people will get that from this commercial.

For more, see related discussion on Techmeme.

Postscript: Adrian Palacios noted on Twitter that Google also has a large video ad now on the home page of the New York Times pushing Twitter:

Over the past couple of years Microsoft and Google have become increasingly intense (maybe even bitter) rivals. Most recently the two companies used Yahoo as something of a pawn their game. It may be somewhat unfair to all involved to characterize Yahoo as a “pawn.” But Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo primarily as a way to better compete against Google in search and online advertising. And Google offered Yahoo a paid search deal in part to help Yahoo develop a credible alternative to Microsoft’s offer and keep the property away from Redmond.

When the Microsoft offer/acquisition failed, it successfully moved to thwart Google’s efforts to extend its paid search reach to Yahoo and convince the government that Google was a search monopoly. Take that!

Now Google says it’s joining the EU anti-trust case against Microsoft tied to the IE browser:

[W]e believe that we can contribute to this debate. We learned a lot from launching our own Google Chrome browser last year and are hoping that Google’s perspective will be useful as the European Commission evaluates remedies to improve the user experience and offer consumers real choices. Of course creating a remedy that helps solve one problem without creating other unintended consequences isn’t easy – but the more voices there are in the conversation the greater the chances of success.

We don’t know how the Commission’s proceeding will evolve. But we are confident that more competition in this space will mean greater innovation on the web and a better user experience for people everywhere.

Interestingly, the author of the Google blog post is Sundar Pichai, Vice President Product Management, one of the team leads for Chrome. Google’s move to some degree reflects how important it considers Chrome and its adoption to be in the long term for the company. It’s also something of a “poke in the eye” to Microsoft.

The move is likely to add fuel to the fire in the contest between the two companies. Perhaps President Obama should appoint a special peace envoy to address the Google-Microsoft conflict?

One of the key features of Google Chrome is how it will list the sites you regularly visit on your home page when the browser starts. Now Google has brought that to Firefox, via the latest Google Toolbar update now available.

With the update, if you open a new blank tab in Firefox, the sites you visit most often will be listed.

Of course, not everyone will like having all the sites they regularly visit showing up this way. I find it annoying in Chrome that this cannot be disabled. But Google tells me this can be disabled using the Google Toolbar’s Settings option. And if you clear your Firefox history, that also clears what’s used for creating the tabs. You’re also supposed to be able to individually prevent certain sites from showing.

Official news on the change is coming from Google shortly, but some people are already seeing the toolbar with the new functionality, as Google Blogoscoped notes. However, when I’ve downloaded the toolbar, I’ve yet to get it work for me. I’m checking further on this.

Postscript: Figured it out. I kept downloading the non-beta version of the toolbar. The functionality is only in Google Toolbar For Firefox 5 Beta. I also do NOT see a way to disable the new feature there.

Postscript 2: To remove a particular site, use the “Edit thumbnails” link at the bottom of the “Most visited” tab that appears. To disable the feature entirely, click on the Wrench icon in the toolbar, then the Search tab, then the section called “Web-browsing tools” and then untick “Enable the Google new tab page.”

Postscript 3: Google’s now blogged about the new feature.

As was reported yesterday, Google’s browser Chrome is coming out of beta — a mere 100 days after it was introduced. When I commented to Sundar Pichai, Product VP, that this had to be one of the fastest exits from beta for Google in recent memory he explained that “Google has a very traditional approach to our client software products,” meaning it accelerates the process of getting them to a general release.

There were suggestions on the TechCrunch blog that third parties were potentially exerting pressure on or encouraging Google to hurry up the general release of Chrome. I asked Pichai about this idea and he said that the product was “very far along” when they initially released it in September. He added that the bugs and feature requests have been addressed; so it was time to come out of beta.

What bugs and feature requests?

Pichai said that there had been some issues with audio and video that were now fixed. He added that the browser is now more stable and even faster — indeed speed is one of its chief selling points. Among the feature requests, there are now better privacy controls (in one place), better bookmark management and various security upgrades and improvements. On the nagging question of a Mac version, Pichai said there was a good deal of internal pressure to get one done but it was a “non-trival matter.” He said that one would likely be out by the “end of the first half” of 2009.

One of the great features of Chrome is the new tab page (pictured above). Somewhat like Opera’s “speed dial,” it offers a grid display of most commonly visited sites for easy access. Another feature I would like to see Google add is one like Firefox’s “save and quit” option, which remembers tabs and sites and reopens them upon launching the browser during a subsequent session.

There are a host of coming improvements such as better RSS support and support for extensions, among a range of other things. Pichai also said that the browser has an impressive 10 million users after three months. That’s a very big number but to put it in the context of the larger browser market, here’s the marketshare breakdown:

I asked Google about location in the browser. Google Gears and its Geolocation API are built into Chrome. What that means is that Google’s WiFi and cell tower database triangulation will be able to pinpoint users with a high degree of accuracy (much like Google’s “MyLocation” does on mobile phones). It’s also similar to what Mozilla is doing with the next version of Firefox.

Pichai was not able to discuss these matters in great detail given that they were outside the scope of his responsibility. However he reminded me of the “double opt in” privacy policy tied to the Geolocation API. Google asks if you want to expose your location and third party developers or publishers trying to access that information must also request access from users.

There are lots of implications both for publishers and advertisers coming from this improved location awareness (Windows 7 will also have it). Here’s a previous post on some of the implications of location in the browser.

In the background, Microsoft has allegedly signed a deal with Dell Computer (a long time Google search partner) to pre-load the Live Search toolbar. If all that is true, an improved Chrome could be a carrot to retain the Dell relationship.