Google Chrome

I actually watched the stream cast of Google's meandering "announcement" on Tuesday.
The press was speculating that Google would be launching a Chrome based netbook computer.

That information was at least partly accurate, more so than the come-and-went rumor that a Google pad would be announced on Black Friday.

What it really was... well, imagine that a deadline for a major project has come up but you aren't done, not even close. So you go to the boss and put the best possible spin on it by showing all of the cool things you are working on, and you promise it will be really spectacular when you are done, but you are not sure when that is.

And that's what we got on Tuesday.

The other thing that became glaringly apparent is that in the time that has passed since Google announced the project, the ground has shifted out from under them... only the Chrome OS team didn't notice. They stayed focused on building a laptop computer with a "Nothing but the net" operating system. That's all well and good, but honestly, I have that now if I want it.

Yes, Chrome OS is faster, more efficient, more inherently secure (assuming they deliver on what they said), but it does not bring any really new capability. It just packages and presents things differently.

No... what our friends in Mountain View missed is what happened in Cupertino.
The iPhone changed the landscape of phones forever. Google was well positioned to throw some serious competition at it with Android. But in the notebook computer arena, I'm going out on a limb and saying that the MacBook is going to look an awful lot like an iPad with a keyboard sooner rather than later. It is not a big leap. Apple is just coming there from a different direction.

What Google needs to do, and do it quickly, is get Chrome OS working on a tablet device. If they had announced a tablet on Tuesday that did the things they were demonstrating, I would have been in line to get one that afternoon. In fact, the way the event was structured, I could see them building to that... but at the final moments, well, let's just say they left me excited by the possibilities, but not satisfied. And they were doing such a good job too. I really wanted what they were having, but they came up short.