Google Chrome

Confirming previous reports, Conceivably Tech has uncovered a post that Google Chrome will soon be making its way into Android. A post on the Chromium Message Boards tells us that Android’s version of Chrome will have the same features as the desktop version — tabs, Skia 2D graphics library, and maybe a combined search and website bar?

Sadly, there’s no word on when this new browser will hit.  Now we’re not drawing any conclusions, but perhaps this will be announced at Google’s (and Samsung’s) event October 11th? For those of you who haven’t heard, Samsung and Google are rumored to announce the Nexus Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich. While this tour didn’t show it, let’s hope Chrome is bundled into ICS.
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As noted by The Next Web, Google’s VP of Product Bradley Horowitz, told Wired in an interview that Google+ will soon be Google. “Be Google?”, you’re probably thinking. What he means is that Google+ will soon not be its own product, but rather tied into almost every service offered by Google. You may remember when Google+ was sort-of tied into YouTube, but Horowitz says it will go deeper than that.

“Until now, every single Google property acted like a separate company. Due to the way we grew, through various acquisitions and the fierce independence of each division within Google, each product sort of veered off in its own direction.

… But Google+ is Google itself. We’re extending it across all that we do—search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube—so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are.”

Google+ will soon be tied into ads (which has already happened), Chrome, Android, Maps, and more. This will begin to make a definitive Google product, leaving Google+ no longer acting as a separate company. This should make it easier on the non-technical folk, unlike you or me.

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Just look at the Graphs.  As Google puts it:

When the sun goes down, the tablets come out to play
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From some slides of an internal presentation given by Google, it appears that where there is now Google Docs, there will soon be ‘Google Drive’.  Most of the functionality, like uploading files of any type, of the mythical Google Drive now lies in Docs Hopefully, with this upcoming rebrand, Google allows more storage (let me buy it) and also has some utilities like backing up the home folder on Windows or Mac.  Seriously, what better way to get users to adopt your system than to offer to sych your files to the cloud.

Oh, now that we have all of your files, you might as well get a Chomebook.

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Trying to get in before the October 4th flood perhaps, today AT&T announced their Galaxy S II varient would hit shelves on October 2nd.  We’ve talked extensively about the Galaxy SII here (read).  As a refresher, AT&T’s is closest to the international version with the same 4.3 inch display – contrasted with the 4.5 variety that T-Mobile and Sprint are carrying.  Interestingly, it will also have NFC, which Sprint’s surprisingly doesn’t.  Sprint is a partner in Google’s NFC-based Wallet initiative.

This is an amazing phone but it is interesting that AT&T is squeaking it in before the iPhone announcement.  On the other hand, it says something that AT&T is going with the Galaxy SII moniker rather than something like “Captivate 2”.  It seems like Samsung’s Galalxy S line can stand on its own.  T-Mobile called its 4G Vibrant model the Galaxy S earlier this year so it appears to be a trend.

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Chrome Web Store, the Google-operated repository of web apps for the Chrome browser, has expaneded to 24 new countries, Google announced in a blog post. The newly supported territories are:

Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Last month, Google brought Chrome Web Store to sixteen new countries. The nine-month-old store is now available in 55 countries around the world and it hosts web apps which accept in-app payments with a flat five percent fee.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-n9p28Yh8w]

YouTube has released a simple editor available on the web for users who want to make changes, before actually uploading a video. The editor isn’t anything ground breaking, but adds the ability to add small changes like stabilizing, color changes, and rotation. The new editing features also work on videos that have already been uploaded. If you don’t like changes you can revert back to the original, or upload the changes as a totally new video. We’re sure Google will add more editing features over time, but in the mean time give it a try!

Chrome and Android, the two crucial weapons in Google’s assault on mobile and desktop, are showing no signs of stopping. We already reported today that Android passed iOS globally. When it comes to browsing the web, Google’s Chrome zoomed past the 25 percent mark for the first time this weekend, ConceivablyTech observed. More precisely, Chrome grabbed 25.02 percent share this past Sunday, per StatCounter Global Stats data.

The software has been growing rapidly, registering global market share of 18.29 percent in April, 19.36 percent in May 2011, 20.65 percent in June and 22.14 percent in July. Apple’s Safari grew marginally, adding just 0.02 percentage points to its 5.17 percent share in July. The latest StatCounter data, which may not be representative of the entire market, really spells trouble for Mozilla’s Firefox. Mozilla’s browser used to be the preferred alternative to Microsoft’s market-dominating Internet Explorer not that long time ago. How times change…

Firefox’s share is declining five times faster than Internet Explorer’s, indicating that Chrome is slowly but steadily chipping away at Firefox’s market position, which is now within spitting distance. Firefox scored a 27.49 share for the month of August versus 41.89 percent for Internet Explorer. The fact that only 14.5 percent of web users, or 54 percent of Firefox users, have upgraded to Firefox 6 is another indicative of shifting tides as Google gains significant ground in the web browsing space.

Google also benefits from the silent updating mechanism, a computer process that sits in the background to automatically keep your Chrome installation up to date, without any intervention on your part. Did the latest StatsCounter numbers surprise you? The writing has been on the wall for some time.

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As reported by Google Operating System, Google will release a “smarter” spell checker in a future update of Chrome. Currently, Chrome only uses the dictionary to spell check, not taking context into consideration. The future update, however, will work like Google Search’s “did you mean” feature.

Google has been hesitant to add the updated spell checker citing privacy concerns. As Google Operating System explains, a JSON-RPC request is sent to the “did you mean” service in the background, where the context-menu will then be updated. It will be interesting to see how fast Google can get results to come back.

Announced by the company in a blog post, Google is now partnering with FedEx to offer Google Docs uploading inside of Print Online. Print Online is FedEx’s service that allows users to upload documents to be printed at a local FedEx stores for pickup. But what happens when you write your documents inside of Google Docs, and not Pages or Word? With the companies new partnership, you will now be able to upload files directly into Print Online from the cloud.

Tuesday, Google also announced in a blog post that support for one click Cloud Print has been added — along with the ability to add page numbers. As you can see in the screenshot after the break, Cloud Print is easy — with just one click you can print to any printer (as long as its setup) from any device or OS. The Cloud Print feature is currently available only in documents and spreadsheets. Furthermore, the new page numbers feature is a must for those of us who use the MLA format on a daily basis. The ability to add page numbers is definitely a feature Docs has been lacking..

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While it might feel like yesterday in comparison to the other browsers, Chrome is celebrating its third birthday this month after having launched the Windows beta in September of 2008. In celebration, Google has posted an interactive HTML5 graphic charting innovations of Chrome that you can check out here.

They’ve also posted some of Chrome’s highlights over the years including innovations in prerendering technology, the Chrome Web Store, hardware accelerated 3D CSS, and the launch of the Chromebook.

Chrome has come a long way in just three short years, having released support for Mac and Linux a year in with its sixth release, and not long after moving to a six-week release cycle. Recent stats have Chrome steadily growing in market share and recently benchmarked as the fastest browser for real world use.

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If you believe the rumors, Google’s been working on a cloud-based drive for your computer since 2005. Code-named “Platypus” and also known as GDrive, it was supposed to arrive long ago, as I wrote over at TG Daily in January 2009. Today’s article by TechCrunch asserts that the search company may be close to launching Gdrive, based on code hooks discovered in Chrome that point to the drive.google.com URL:

Diving a bit deeper into the code reviews, what’s most striking is that drive.google.com doesn’t appear to be referenced anywhere besides this one exposed ticket. This suggests that it’s either no big deal, or that Google is keeping this very secret.

TechCrunch also reminds us of Steven Levy’s book “In The Plex” which describes how Google+ lead Bradley Horowitz “convinced Google’s top executives not to launch” Gdrive back in 2008 because he felt “the concept of a ‘file’ was outdated”.

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Samsung’s Chromebooks are receiving a slight price drop today, as noted by TechCrunch. The Wi-Fi and 3G versions of the Chromebook originally both sold for $429 and $499 — respectively. Samsung’s new prices of the Chromebooks are now listed on Amazon as $399 for the Wi-Fi model and $449 for the 3G model. The price drop is a two week back-to-school promotional. You also might like to know that offline mode is coming soon. Get yours hands on it while you can!

Google’s put in motion an Apple-like plan calling for Chromebooks in education, traditionally a strong market for Apple’s Macintosh computers. The company announced on its official Enterprise blog back-to-school deals with three schools that will begin using Chromebooks when students return over the coming weeks. First up, the Fessenden School in West Newton, MA, an independent K-9 institution which will add two carts of Chromebooks that will also be available for use in the library.

Grace Lutheran School, a small private school in Oshkosh, central Wisconsin, will be sharing Chromebooks throughout the day in classrooms among 5th through 8th grade students. And finally, Merton Community School District, also in Wisconsin, will give 110 sixth graders Chromebooks to keep and use until they graduate from eighth grade. At $20 per user per month, users get a Chromebook, a web-based management console for IT and 24/7 support from Google. The company says it’s seeing “a lot of interest from K-12 institutions” from their Chromebook for Education initiative.

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Several new enhancements have surfaced in the latest developer version of Google’s Chrome browser. As previously announced, the software now respects Apple’s multitouch gesturing philosophy in OS X Lion. This means you can flick your finger left or right on your Magic Mouse (or two fingers on a trackpad) to advance and go back in your history. Unfortunately, the browser doesn’t yet support double-tap or pinch to smoothly zoom in and out of web pages iPhone-style, like Safari on Lion. Another handy treat: You can now rest assured that accidentally hitting the Command + Q combo won’t quit Chrome because a subtle overlay appears telling you to hold down the combo briefly in order to quit.

In addition, Chrome now supports Lion’s Full-Screen feature through the standard full-screen button found in the upper right corner of the window. The latest nightly build across all platforms also sports the brand new Omnibar history syncing feature which comes on top of the previously available syncing capabilities for Chrome extensions, passwords, bookmarks, web apps, autofill items, browser settings and themes. A multi-profile feature has also seen some work in the visual department, even though it is not yet available in nightly Chrome builds for OS X. If you wish to try out those experimental features, we recommend installing the Google Chrome Canary build. This particular version, unlike other Chrome channels, runs without a hiccup alongside your existing stable Chrome installation.

Cross-posted on 9to5Mac.com

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Google engineer Ido Green just made comment on This week in Google that offline mode for Gmail and Calendar are on their way by the end of the summer. There was talk of these features at this year’s Google I/O, but it’s nice to know offline mode is still on track. Besides Gmail and Calendar, Green also said there are a few more offline features coming.

When we think of Google and browsers we usually think of the latest Chrome build, the fastest real world use desktop browser around. While the browser currently shipping on Android is nothing to sneeze at, Google’s real innovation in the browser space is arguably happening with Chrome. That’s why it’s surprising we haven’t heard more about a potential port of Chrome to Android, a project the Android team is now actively working on with the open source WebKit community.

Googler Andrei Popescu, along with a couple others working on the project, took to WeKit-Dev group today (via TechCrunch) to announce their focus on the port:

We would like to give an update about WebKit on Android. A while ago, we started the effort to upstream the Android port of WebKit. For a variety of reasons, this work took longer than anticipated and was never finished. We realize that the incomplete Android port that exists today in WebKit ToT has caused quite a bit of confusion and inconvenience to the project as a whole and we are very sorry for that.

In case you’re confused, the browser currently running on Android was originally based on the WeKit layout engine and Chrome’s V8 Javascript engine, but also varies from the desktop version of Chrome enough that two separate teams work on the two browsers.

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Apple and Google are clearly the two front-runners competing for market share in the mobile world, which is why it’s no surprise we think of iOS and Android when we think of apps. With the growth of the smartphone industry also came the resurgence of native apps (thanks largely in part to Apple’s App Store which still dominates the space). However, Mozilla hopes that web apps will soon mature to provide a comparable experience for end users and an even better alternative for developers.

“We are aiming at providing all the necessary APIs to build a basic HTML5 phone experience within the next 3-6 months”

While Chrome OS has shown promise, it isn’t the only browser-based platform planning on entering the web app space… If Mozilla has its way, developers can use the results of their new WebAPI project to build an “HTML5 phone experience” that’s compatible across all operating systems (whether it’s Android, iOS, Windows Phone, etc).

A report from CNET claims Mozilla has plans for the APIs to “interact with a phone’s dialler, address book, contacts list, and camera”, essentially giving you access to the same functionality of native apps but directly in your device’s browser.

The WebAPI project certainly isn’t trying to create a full-blown operating system. However, working hand in hand with Mozilla’s Boot to Gecko project, which aims to build a “complete, standalone operating system for the web”, it could create a potentially compelling alternative to Google’s browser-based Chrome OS.

It appears that Mozilla is serious about the project, as a report from CNET claims they’re in the process of hiring full time programmers and plan to have the basics in place by February.
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Image credit: dropit2entrecard.blogspot.com

Something fell off our plate amid the late craze in tech reporting, especially with Google buying Motorola and HP abandoning PC biz and webOS devices. That doesn’t mean this little nugget is not worthy your attention, quite the contrary. Three years ago, Google mentioned it would eventually enable the so-called native code execution in Chrome. The latest beta of Chrome 14, unleashed a week ago, now supports this functionality, the Google Operating System blog has discovered.

In Layman’s terms, native code execution lets the Chrome browser run snippets of web code specifically optimized for your computer’s processor rather than analyze, interpret and painstakingly turn HTML code line by line into a machine-readable format – that takes a lot of time, slowing down code execution as a result.

Google’s definition simply states the technique lets developers “build web applications that seamlessly execute native compiled code inside the browser”. For our tech-savvy readers, Google outlined some of the benefits of this technique in the announcement blog post three years ago:

Modern PCs can execute billions of instructions per second, but today’s web applications can access only a small fraction of this computational power. If web developers could use all of this power, just imagine the rich, dynamic experiences they could create. At Google we’re always trying to make the web a better platform. That’s why we’re working on Native Client, a technology that aims to give web developers access to the full power of the client’s CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability and safety that people expect from web applications.

The stable Chrome 14 release is expected within a month, when native code execution will become standard feature for the 160 million active Chrome users, as of May 11. So, why should you care? Read on…

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According to the Wall Street Journal, Kodak has started the process of auctioning off some or all of its lucrative patents. Kodak’s demise is well documented as the once $30B company has seen its market cap slide to around $800m as the digital imaging company has continuously lost share to competitors. According to the WSJ one potential bidder is “a large, strategic buyer in the wireless industry looking to use the patents for defensive protection.”

This news comes on the tails of this past Monday’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google for a whopping $12.6B in cash. Google has long been rumored as potential suitors of multiple patent-holding companies such as InterDigital, Kodak and of course Motorola Mobility. If these Kodak patents do sell, they will not gather nearly as high of a price as the Motorola deal, but could likely see Kodak’s stock take a nice move up.  This morning’s news of one analyst saying Kodak’s patents could be worth 5x the company’s market cap sent shares up more than 25% and are currently up more than 5% in after hours trading on the latest Wall Street Journal news.  Meanwhile, InterDigital saw a pop in its shares today as another rumor was swirling that an auction will take place after Labor Day weekend and that there are multiple interested parties.
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