Gauson

Chrome, Google’s much-anticipated operating system, will be available on the market according to the latest buzz on the Internet. Chrome OS, which shares its name with Google’s web browser, was announced last July. The news from the blog TechCrunch cites from an “unnamed source” saying users will be able to download Chrome OS within a week.

It will sit on top of a Linux kernel and will use a new windowing system. It will also have limited driver support therefore Google will only approve installations on a limited number of computers –mostly netbooks – including a number of Eee PCs. The Web will be its application development platform and may become a serious contender to Windows 7 in the netbook computer space.

Previously, Google had fixed the release date stating “The first netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.”

However thrilling TechCrunch’s news may sound, this isn’t the first time a rumor like this has been started. Just a month ago, numerous sources in China claimed devices running preview builds of Chrome OS would be out in the market as early as November. This was then followed by a series of premature reports of the OS that all turned out to be false information.

Nevertheless, it will be exciting to see how well Chrome competes with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard from Apple only recently released to consumers. But if there is one thing to be learnt in the world of technology, it is to never leave Google out of the loop.

Just don’t get your hopes too high if you are looking forward to having Google’s Chrome OS on your notebook before the month’s end.

The Microsoft and Yahoo merger isn’t a foregone issue. It’s been three and a half months since the two companies announced they had reached a “binding letter agreement” on their search deal but straightening out the full pact is taking the two sides longer than expected.

In a statement, Microsoft said the two companies remain dedicated to their arrangement and given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some issues that need additional clarity and definitive details. Yahoo then released a statement saying both companies are optimistic that they will be able to close their deal by early 2010.

For the time being, Yahoo is concentrating mainly on their media sites most of which are No.1 in their categories. Sites such as Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Finance are very popular and attract millions of unique visitors on a monthly basis. Microsoft, on the other hand, is happy that it is finally getting what it wants which is an increased search market share to take on rival Google giving them the scale and resources to create and expand the future of search.

At the end of the year, Yahoo plans to end its paid inclusion program, formally called Search Submit Pro which is similar to pay-per-click, after having received complaints that having paid advertisements incorporated in organic search results could create biased results. Yahoo’s page inclusion program enabled users to pay for page inclusion but not page rank.

On the plus side, having reliable and guaranteed page inclusion enabled web developers to optimize their web pages for specific search results. Protests were made as Yahoo’s page inclusion program was trickling into traditional search engine optimization (SEO) practices that included keyword manipulation and pay-per-click advertisements. Most web developers believe the end to paid inclusion will kick-start pay-per-click advertisements and other online marketing businesses. Yahoo had chosen the final date at the end of the year to give their advertisers time to adjust to the changes.

Last month, Google and Microsoft grabbed larger pieces of U.S. search market share whereas Yahoo lost market share for the second month in a row. Analysts say Yahoo’s 18% search share was the lowest mark ever and that Yahoo must find a way to stabilize its share loss. Microsoft on the other hand, increased its market share for five straight months, boosted by its new Bing search engine and integration of Yahoo’s search technology.

With Yahoo out of the core search business with Bing handling the back-end of the project whereas Yahoo will take care of the front-end design, lots of users will expect Yahoo to focus even more on the content side of the business so it is undoubtedly true that Yahoo’s properties such as Yahoo! News and Media Group, Yahoo! Sports as well as Yahoo! Finance will get lots of investments and plenty of attention. Seeing as how Yahoo will be left in a vulnerable position as it stated it can no longer operate search by itself, I cannot help but wonder what will be Yahoo’s imminent future?  But with passion and new creations to further develop search user experience, it is highly likely that Yahoo will carry on playing a significant part in all of this.

As Microsoft’s Bing takes over Yahoo search, web developers who saw a great deal of traffic from Yahoo will find it useful to optimize their own sites for Bing. With Bing utilizing Yahoo’s database of profiles, analytics and behavioral targeting, Microsoft is going to close the gap between itself and Google which in turn should aid in core search improvements and facilitate advances on their personalization front as well. It is exciting to know that search technology will continue to develop and converge with other digital arenas such as mobile, platform gaming and other interesting areas that we have yet to envision.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is the latest edition of the long-running IE browser series by Microsoft. IE8 provides a lot of add-ons (free as well as paid ones) and tabbed browsing which was fully integrated since IE7. Its average start-up time is better than all the other browsers. IE8 comes with cool features called accelerators that allow you to efficiently access your everyday browsing activities like translating or defining words, mapping directions, emailing your friends etc. – all in a single browser window in just a few mouse clicks.

It comes with InPrivate Browsing which is a feature many of the popular browsers have had for a long time before Microsoft included it in the IE8. The feature whereby cookies, history, passwords, objects and form data disappear once the browser is closed. That way you can browse the Net without saving your history on your own PC in case you ever need to shop for that special gift so your family would not accidentally find out or use a shared computer without worry and not leave a trace.

Microsoft also utilizes ‘Web Slices’ technology that takes Internet Explorer one step ahead of Firefox’s ‘Suggested Sites’ feature button. With Web Slices, this will automatically trace sites that may be related to the one you are viewing therefore keeping up with frequently updated sites directly from the Favorites Bar. If a Web Slice is available on a web page, a green Web Slices symbol will appear in the upper-right hand corner of the browser which you can then click to easily subscribe to and add them to the Favorites Bar.

Now what is a web developer without his/her tools? Microsoft claims they have “the most comprehensive developer tools built in” but compared to Firefox’s built-in Javascript console topped with their add-ons, Microsoft still has a long way to go. Sure the IETester “MyDebug” toolbar does have a number of good tools, but that has nothing to do with Microsoft as the toolbar is an entirely separate product. As both a web developer and avid user of all browsers, there is no browser out there better than Firefox in terms of customizability. Needless to say, it would be a long time until someone can beat Firefox in that area.

In the looks department try as it might, Microsoft just cannot seem to compete with the silky shades of Opera, the clear contrasts of Mozilla Firefox, or the smooth, cool and soft-hued graphics of Safari. The need to adapt one’s website to each browser is crucial for website development in the front and back-ends. Nothing worse than it working brilliantly on one browser and then not-so brilliantly on the other top four browsers. As a developer I work with all the browsers to ensure that each one of my websites is fully optimized with the features of every browser. A point to note for developers as well is how browsers fare on the Acid3 test. Compared to Safari 4 (which scored the full 100/100 on the test), all the other browsers were hugely inferior to Safari in their rendering capabilities. Although IE8 tests were poor, the standards built into IE8 are far better than IE7 and IE6.

It is true IE8 does account for a lot of the CSS 2.x standards that are available at the moment, however it also includes many IE-only features that makes it hard to utilize the standards.

Though IE 8 is noticeably faster than its predecessor IE7, according to tests run by Computerworld IE8 was 9.6 times faster using Google’s new Chrome Frame plug-in than IE8 on its own. Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite three times each for IE8 with Chrome Frame, and IE8 without the plug-in, then averaged the scores. This did not make Microsoft a very happy camper in this category. Google’s Chrome Frame allows IE8 to utilize the Chrome’s browser’s WebKit rendering engine and its high-performance V8 JavaScript engine as well, thus making Chrome the fastest out of the top five Windows browsers by comfortable margins.

IE8’s SmartScreen Filter is their latest security feature that protects users against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise their data, identity and privacy.  To add to that in two studies recently conducted by NSS Labs funded by, wait for it, Microsoft, it was found that IE8 was discovered to be the safest web browser. The studies focused on socially engineered malware and phishing. NSS attributed this to “concerted efforts Microsoft is making in the SmartScreen technology.”

At the end of it all, it still boils down to personal preferences.  More than two-thirds of the world uses IE since it a standard browser with Microsoft’s OS and that does not seem to be changing in the near future. If you are one of them, that’s good news for you. I have to admit IE8 has made a massive leap forward for standards support but I cannot help but wonder how we will see IE8 in a year or two as Microsoft has been playing catch up with most of the other popular browsers for a long time. Though to help get the most out of your web experience, it is recommended that users of any IE version prior to IE8 should either upgrade to IE8 or switch to another browser in order to experience greatly increased speed, reduced security risks and many other benefits. Whichever browser you choose, you are assured a safer, faster and satisfying browsing experience than ever before. Suffice it to say as to which browser experience is the better out of all them that is best left to the users to decide and put a vote to.