Webware

Netbooks running Google's Chrome OS might be a little different from the standard Netbook, based on Google's specification requirements.

(Credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--There's still an awful lot about Google's Chrome OS project that remains up in the air, but Thursday's demonstration did reveal a bit about how Google thinks the Netbook should evolve.

At an event here Thursday, Google showed off the browser-based operating system for the first time since announcing it in July. Chrome OS won't be available for consumers to purchase for about a year, although developers can get started playing around with the source code as of today, thanks to the open-source release of the code.

Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, took about 50 members of the press through a basic tour of Chrome OS that didn't reveal a whole lot more about what was already known about Google's plans for the operating system. The basic look-and-feel of the software greatly resembles the Chrome browser, as expected, and it's designed to provide a fast lightweight computing experience for Netbook users.

Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google, explains Google's vision for Chrome OS Netbooks Thursday.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

But Google did provide some glimpses of what it thinks a Netbook should resemble. For one thing, it plans to develop a detailed specification of hardware components that Chrome OS Netbook makers must adhere to in order to use the operating system.

"We really want software to understand the underlying hardware," Pichai said. Whether he intended to or not, with that statement he revealed that for Google, reinventing the personal computing experience is about more than the software.

How so? Google seems to agree with a fair amount of Netbook users--not to mention Apple COO Tim Cook--that current Netbooks with cramped keyboards and small touch pads aren't going to cut it in the long run. Pichai did not provide specific details, but hinted that users could expect Chrome OS Netbooks to have slightly larger keyboards and screens than some of the current models for sale.

Chrome OS will run on either x86 or ARM processors, giving hardware manufacturers some choices as to how they want to build their systems. But they will have to use solid-state drives based off of flash memory, presumably for performance and reliability reasons, although they won't have to use a lot of memory because Chrome OS is designed to start most data in the cloud with very little local storage.

These Netbooks will be designed with 802.11n Wi-Fi chips in mind, Pichai said. However, a device such as this--designed almost exclusively for online use--may not be as compelling if users are stuck bouncing from Wi-Fi hotspot to Wi-Fi hotspot.

Google wants to catalyze the era of Web applications with its Chrome OS project, but Mozilla has no plans for its own browser-based operating system, at least for now.

"We're really focused on making the Web the right platform of whatever operating system one is using. That's a fair amount of work," Mozilla Foundation Chairman Mitchell Baker said. "I think we're going to continue to focus for quite awhile on the Web itself as a platform and the capabilities of the Web rather than build an operating system of our own and pull everybody into our world."

Mozilla Foundation Chairman Mitchell Baker

(Credit: Mozilla)

Baker shared the thoughts in an interview about the Mozilla Foundation's report of $79 million. The foundation isn't strapped for cash, but it is financially tiny compared to the three main rivals in the browser market today, Microsoft, Apple, and Google.

Microsoft was largely dormant when Firefox was getting its start five years ago, but the company is lighting a fire under its Internet Explorer developers for IE 9. Among the features the company touted are faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, better compliance with Web standards, and higher performance in general.

Internet Explorer remains the dominant browser in use today. Today, the elderly IE 6, dating from 2001, still is the most widely used version, and its widespread use is an anchor that keeps Web developers and therefore other browsers from advancing as fast as they might. So, unsurprisingly, Baker was comfortable with the prospect of a higher-powered IE being resurgent.

"If it could resurge enough to pull the hundreds of millions of people still using IE 6, we'd all be ecstatic," she said. "A lot of people are going to continue to use IE. They get it on their machine. If Microsoft makes that product more capable so the Web can move forward, there's good in that."

The Mozilla Foundation, of which Firefox developer Mozilla Corp. is a taxable subsidiary, gets the bulk of its revenue from Google through a search-ad deal that runs through 2011 at present. Search traffic that stems from Firefox's built-in search bar is set by default to go to Google, and a portion of the resulting Google search-ad revenue goes back to Mozilla.

Mozilla is looking to diversify its revenue sources, though, Baker said, and has taken some small steps.

"We did some small diversification in search, for example in Russia," using Google rival Yandex's services, she said. "We look at diversification, but we're not rushing into it."

And she's comfortable with today's funding situation because it doesn't force Mozilla to take Firefox in a direction it doesn't want to go.

"We have search in the product because we want it. We don't have any other discussions with Google about what the product is," she said. "The search and revenue relationship is completely distinct from the product development relationship."

Though Mozilla's revenue grew only at 5 percent from 2007 to 2008, compared to 12 percent the year before, Baker isn't concerned. "It matches our projections" of slow, steady growth, she said. "We're pretty much in line."

Digging into the financial statement, it should be noted that the foundation's $79 million in revenue is after a $7.8 million unrealized loss in the value of its investments. As the economy improves, it's possible those investments will recover some of their value.

The foundation is making more money than it loses. Expenses were $49 million for 2008, according to the financial statement.

"We have adequate resources to do what we have planned, plus save a little bit," Baker said. "Right now we're not bumping up against the ceiling. Our revenue is adequate to meet our needs. We try to be careful with money."

The Internal Revenue Service is scrutinizing Mozilla's corporate structure--a foundation with two taxable if not exactly for-profit subsidiaries. The foundation disclosed the scrutiny a year ago, and that investigation is continuing, Baker said.

"The IRS can be a very slow-moving organization. It's still an open discussion," she said, and the foundation is taking the matter seriously. "We don't have a clear idea what the IRS is thinking."

Two years ago, the Mozilla Foundation established its second taxable subsidiary, Mozilla Messaging, which focuses on the Thunderbird e-mail software and more recently on the Web-based Raindrop universal communications service. For now, that project gets its funding from the Firefox side of the house, but Baker plans to increase its financial focus once the near-final Thunderbird 3 is finished.

"The task now is to ship first Thunderbird 3. We expect to see that this year," Baker said. Mozilla overall is set up to be sustainable, not to be a money machine, but Mozilla Messaging will need to generate more revenue on its own eventually to help with that sustainability effort.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google has released the source code for its Chrome OS project, as it prepares to show off the lightweight operating system for the first time.

Sundar Pichai, Google's VP of product management

(Credit: Google)

Google has invited much of the technology press to an event here at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters Thursday morning to demonstrate Chrome OS, which it is developing for Netbooks as a new type of operating system. However, those of you who speak code can get started poking around with the operating system at the Chromium project blog, as spotted by the Google Operating System blog.

Several Google engineers are expected to speak at the event Thursday morning, as Google shows off Chrome OS after first announcing it in July. We'll have regular updates as events warrant.

Updated 10:10 a.m. PST: Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google, kicked off the presentation by setting expectations: Google is about a year away from releasing Chrome OS. There will be no beta today, and no products to announce, but the main news is that the "code is fully open," he said, allowing Google developers to work on the project hand-in-hand with the community.

Updated 10:22 a.m. PST: Pichai ran through a lot of things we already know building up to the big reveal: Netbook shipments are growing, people are doing more and more in their browser as opposed to running desktop applications, and laptops and smartphones are converging into new types of devices like tablets and e-readers.

Every application on Chrome OS will be a Web application, Pichai said. This will help improve speed and especially security, since users won't be installing applications to their systems, he said.

Google is actually running the presentation on a Chrome laptop, although Pichai warns that because Chrome OS is a year away from release, the actual UI could change between now and then. If you've used Chrome, you've seen the basic Chrome OS UI.

Updated 10:36 a.m. PST: Matt Papakipos, engineering director for Chrome OS, took over for Pichai to explain how Google is making Chrome OS work under the hood. Google's whole idea is to make Chrome-based laptops more like televisions: flip a switch, and it's on. They are eliminating the boot loader and optimizing the kernel so that all the services that normally load with an OS at start-up don't load until they are needed.

They are using a verified boot process that uses multiple signature keys to verify whether or not Web applications are legitimate. Papakipos demonstrates what happens when Chrome OS tries to download malware: it detects the malware and reboots the system back to a clean image, which is much easier than doing such a thing on a regular PC or Mac because it's Web-oriented and the data is backed up in the cloud.

Updated 10:46 a.m. PST: Pichai retakes the stage to talk about how Chrome OS Netbooks will make it on store shelves. They're not ready to talk about these plans in detail since we're about a year away, but there's a few plans that are relatively solid.

Google will specify components for Chrome OS Netbook partners: you won't be able to download Chrome OS on an existing Netbook, you'll have to buy a Chrome OS-optimized Netbook. For example, Google won't support hard drives: Chrome OS Netbooks will have to use solid-state drives. "We really want the software to understand the underlying hardware," Pichai said.

The hope is that these Netbooks will be ready by next year's holiday season, Pichai said. There's no word on price yet, but Google hinted that it's going to require Netbook makers to deliver slightly larger Netbooks than are currently en vogue, with full-size keyboards and bigger touch pads.

Updated 10:55 a.m. PST: Even though Google is specifying hardware components, Pichai was not ready to talk about pricing for Chrome OS-Netbooks during a question and answer session. It's hard to predict a year ahead of time what components will cost, he claimed, and said that Google is not setting a specific price point for Chrome OS Netbooks. He did say that Chrome OS Netbooks will likely slot into the prices that people are used to paying for Netbooks today.

Updated 11:11 a.m. PST: Pichai said Google is working on ways to make Chrome OS useful in offline situations, taking advantage of technologies like Google Gears. But this is an operating system designed primarily for online use, he said, later dodging a question about whether or not wireless WAN chips for cellular networks would be part of the Chrome OS Netbook specifications.

Chrome OS Netbooks will run on both x86 and ARM chips, Pichai said. All applications created for the Netbooks will be Web applications, he said: Google does not appear to have plans to allow native applications to run directly on the processor.

Google is hosting a press event at 10 a.m. PST at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to update the world on its plans for world domination via the release of its second operating system (after Android), the Google Chrome OS (FAQ). Google VP Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Matthew Papakipos will reveal technical details and launch plans, and will have demos. Google will be streaming the announcement.

I'll be in the audience when the event kicks off and will be live-blogging my thoughts on the talk as it happens. Josh Lowensohn will be handling reader feedback during the live blog, so if you want to share your observations on what's happening or have questions, please contribute in the live blog window below once the event goes live. Stephen Shankland will also be at the site to grab photos, and Tom Krazit will have the full news rundown and analysis after the event closes.

The developer preview version of Chrome now promotes an as-yet unworking link to an extensions gallery.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google is on the verge of launching a Web site to showcase its extensions to customize what its browser can do.

The company's latest developer preview edition, Chrome 4.0.249.0, promotes the feature on its opening screen and its new-tab page. "New! Google Chrome now has extensions and bookmark sync," the page reads, offering a link to a site that's not public yet, https://chrome.google.com/extensions. (Bookmark sync is already available.)

Extensions and support for Mac OS X and Linux are the headline features of Chrome 4.0. It's available as a beta for Windows, with Mac OS X and Linux beta availability expected in early December. According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta is planned for December 8 release and the stable release of Chrome 4.0 is due January 12.

A number of third-party galleries for Chrome extensions already are available, but programmers for the project have said on mailing lists that a Google site is planned. Earlier this year, Google shipped a version of Chrome that pointed to a collection of visual themes before the Chrome themes gallery was actually live to the public.

Extensions are a key asset of one Chrome competitor, Mozilla's Firefox; extensions permit people to customize the browser and add new features without burdening the overall project. Firefox is getting a new extensions framework, Jetpack, starting with version 3.7 due in the first half of 2010, and Mozilla has just launched its own Jetpack gallery.

Google appears ready to show off its progress in developing Chrome OS, with plans to host an event Thursday at its headquarters.

Chrome OS, which is expected to launch next year, is Google's project to develop an operating system for Netbooks based on a lightweight browser-like experience. It announced the project to great fanfare in July, but has not had much to say about it since.

Expect that to change Thursday. Google will "show a few demos," according to an invitation distributed to members of the press Tuesday, as well as deliver a presentation from Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Google Chrome OS. We'll be there, so be sure to come back on Thursday if you're interested in learning more about Chrome OS.

Google plans to release a Mac beta of Chrome in early December, judging by some chatter on a mailing list for the browser.

Chrome 4.0 is available today as a beta version for Windows but only as a rougher developer-preview version on Linux and Mac OS X. The standout feature of the new version is customization through extensions, a technology that long has been a core asset of another open-source browser, Firefox.

Google has been moving to a new extensions presentation technology called Browser Actions that let people interact with extensions through a small button toward the upper right of the browser window. "We've noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We'd like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well," said Nick Baum, a Google Chrome product manager, in a mailing list posting.

But here's the hitch: Browser Actions only work on Windows and Linux right now. That means those building extensions will leave Mac Chrome users behind for a time. But in telling those developers they won't have long to wait, Baum mentioned the deadline for the beta version.

"The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December," he said.

And Google is on the case for adding Browser Actions to the Mac version of Chrome.

"We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that," Baum said. "If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

Programmers have mostly overcome a crucial hurdle to releasing a beta version of Chrome for the Mac, printing support, but several Windows 7 features won't make the cut for the present 4.x version of Chrome.

The Mac printing support is now added, according to the Google browser's issue-tracking system, though there are "minor remaining issues" and the new features aren't yet distributed with the software.

Google has cited Mac printing support as one holding back a Mac version of the browser. Mac support is important for the company's ambitions to spread the browser and its fast-Web philosophy to mainstream users. The Linux version, while less mainstream now, also is important since it's the foundation of Google's Chrome OS project to build a browser-based operating system for Netbooks.

But on the Windows side of the shop, a number of planned features to support Windows 7 were pushed back to the next version Chrome on Wednesday. That includes support for showing thumbnails of open tabs on the task bar, showing "jump lists" for quick actions such as links recently or frequently visited pages, pinning thumbnails to the task bar, and overlaying a download progress status bar on the Chrome icon.

The present beta and stable releases that Google issued Monday, Chrome version 3.0.195.27 (download for Windows only), are members of the 3.x family. The developer preview is in the 4.x family (download for Windows or Mac OS X). The Windows 7 features had been slated for the 4.x series, but now are planned for version 5, according to the issue-tracking system.

The change doesn't indicate the features have retreated into the distant future, though; Chrome version numbers change relatively rapidly, as evidenced by the move to version 4 in just over a year.

Also pushed back to the 5.x series is built-in support for discovering when Web pages have RSS feeds, one of Chrome's most-requested features. Its absence is ameliorated by a Chrome sample extension for RSS, though.

Extensions remain a work in progress. New ones are arriving steadily, and existing extensions such as Lastpass for filling in passwords and forms and AdSweep for blocking ads is progressing. But Google recently switched interfaces, dropping the use of a toolstrip across the bottom of the browser with pop-up "moles" in favor of browser actions, small icons along the top of the browser.

(Credit: gDial Pro)

Not long ago, my colleague Rafe Needleman ranked a handful of native Google Voice applications for mobile phones, declaring Google's own Google Voice app for Android phones the winner. No big surprise there, as Google owns both the voice service and the mobile operating system, and can snugly fit the Google Voice dialing option into the native dialer. Let's throw another app into the mix, this time it's a Palm WebOS app called gDial Pro.

The free gDial Pro Google Voice client has been around in a homebrew version for a while (a version you can install outside of the App Catalog environment,) and recently became available in Palm's App Catalog. It is a glossy, dark-themed app that, rather than replicate the in-box design of Google's Android app, concentrates on outgoing calls and texts, in addition to a communication history.

gDial Pro opens to a dialpad view where you can start dialing a number, select a contact from the phone's address book, or begin typing a name on the keypad to pull up Google Voice contacts. The contacts' names and numbers won't automatically transfer into the Palm's native address book (for that you're better off syncing the Palm with your Google account), but the app integrates them into WebOS's universal search.

Back in gDial Pro, a navigation ribbon on the bottom jumps you to the SMS view; the in-box where you can sort by SMS, voice mail, and missed communications; and to your favorites. We especially like the Web view, which opens the mobile online version of Google Voice so you can refer back to it from time to time.

It's true that gDial Pro doesn't have the tight integration that Google's Android app has. Like most alternatives, it requires using its own dialpad to engage the Google Voice service; otherwise, you'll be going through the carrier. However, It does, make things simpler by offering a smoother connection via the optional Web dial feature. The Web dialing feature operates over Wi-Fi or the carrier's data connection. Like dialing over a voice connection, the Web dial method also prompts Google Voice to call your phone to connect to the service, but it's less clunky. Voice dialing uses Google Voice's automated-attendant voice mail system to place calls. Unfortunately, Web dialing won't work if you're in an area with weak data signal or if you're roaming without a data agreement--in these cases, you'll have to use the alternative method to place calls with Google Voice.

While the dialer isn't as seamless as Google's Android app, gDial Pro's Google Voice client is the best choice for Palm WebOS device owners. Another free Google Voice app, p2GoogleVoice, challenges gDial Pro from both the homebrew side and from the App Catalog, but without Web dial or an in-box, it only originates calls and texts. Until Google releases an official Google Voice application for Palm WebOS, gDial Pro is your best choice.