Count me among the skeptics who see Google’s Chrome OS announcement this week as, first and foremost, an effort to induce pain in its longtime rival Microsoft. And a pointless one at that.

Many people writing about Chrome OS have argued that there’s a sound business strategy behind it, that of leading to more Google ads for us to click on. While I agree in principle, I also think it’s easy to overstate the benefit to Google: Isn’t most of its revenue already coming from surfers using Windows-based PCs? And yes, many PCs take minutes to boot up and hours to configure – as Google cattily pointed out in arguing how computers (read: Windows) “need to get better” — but will we really use the time saved to click on sponsored links? I doubt it.

Microsoft’s operating software isn’t stealing ad revenue from Google, but if Chrome OS is broadly adopted — a big if for now — it would devastate Microsoft’s profits. Putting such a stake in Microsoft’s cold heart has been a dream inspiring Google’s founders since the company’s earliest days, long before it made much strategic sense.

There’s a similar logic here to Google’s attempt to forge a revenue-sharing partnership with Yahoo, which would have incrementally improved Google’s own revenue had antitrust concerns not derailed it. Google didn’t really need that deal. Rather it was looking to deprive Microsoft of a search asset it very badly wanted, because it believes that if Microsoft loses, it wins. Even if winning is just schadenfreude.

Google’s desire to beat Microsoft goes well beyond its other rivalries. Yahoo has long posed a more direct threat to Google’s ad revenue, but the competitive spirit was always a productive one, and the goal seemed to be a better experience for the web user. Twitter’s real-time search looms as a new threat, but Google has nothing but respect for the company. But Microsoft? The overriding goal is to cause pain.

And that may explain why Google is announcing an operating software that won’t actually be used by many consumers until well over a year from now. Forget that the web and open-source software will all have all evolved significantly by the fall of 2010; the news of Chrome OS has dominated the tech news cycle just as buzz for Windows 7 was building. Google did something similar when Microsoft unveiled Bing, stealing the PR thunder with its own announcement of Google Wave.

Silicon Valley companies have long fostered an animosity toward Microsoft because of its long history of bullying and squashing innovative startups. But that’s ancient history now, as antitrust probes have weakened Microsoft and the cloud has made its core products more peripheral. Beating up on Microsoft used to be a matter of survival in Silicon Valley. Now it’s just an exercise in spite.

Updated with comment from Pandora: Internet radio provider Pandora Media has raised $35 million in new funding, peHUB is reporting, just two days after the company celebrated the establishment of a royalty deal that ends years of negotiation with record labels and content owners. It’s not clear whether there are new investors involved or whether the funding comes from existing backers. Stakeholders in Pandora include Crosslink Capital, WaldenVC, Selby Venture Partners and Labrador Ventures.

As I wrote Wednesday, the resolution of the royalty issue could lead broadly to more investment in the Internet radio sector, as the expenses involved in running a Net broadcasting company become known quantities. Curiously, though, the peHUB report suggests that Pandora’s new funding was in place before the new royalty deal was reached, although it stands to reason that the company could have moved forward with its fundraising as the royalty agreement appeared imminent. Pandora CTO Tom Conrad didn’t mention a new round of funding in our conversation, but he did agree that having royalty structures in place could likely provoke more investment in Pandora’s competitors.

Primarily a free music service supported by advertising, Pandora said this week it would charge its heaviest users 99 cents each month if they exceed a cap of 40 hours of streaming music. The company also offers a separate premium service without ads that costs $36 a year and provides unlimited music from a desktop application.

I’ve contacted multiple sources at Pandora seeking comment, and will post an update if Pandora confirms the news. Update: Pandora CTO Tom Conrad confirmed to me that the company has indeed raised new money, with Greylock Partners leading the round as a first-time investor. He declined to discuss the size of the round or the company’s valuation. Existing stakeholders in Pandora, according to Conrad, include Crosslink Capital, Walden VC, Labrador Ventures, King Street Capital, Hearst Corp., DBL Investors and Selby Ventures.

As well, Greylock’s David Sze is taking a seat on Pandora’s board of directors. Sze also led Greylock’s investments in Facebook, LinkedIn and Digg, among others.

Rick Marini, who co-founded Tickle.com, the quiz site that Monster.com acquired for $100 million in 2004 and later abandoned, is back with SuperFan. The site, which went live this week, is a social network where people can join the fan pages of various celebrities, bands, sports teams and other pop culture icons and compete to win control of their favorites.

SuperFan has two notable things going for it: the integration of game mechanics directly into the site, and a solid team behind the scenes. The company’s board includes proven names such as Rapture’s Sean Fanning, WonderHill’s James Currier and social gaming application guru Blake Commagere. Plus, all of SuperFan’s employees came from Tickle. As for the site itself, it incorporates game mechanics and quizzes –- Tickle’s stickiest feature -– to both monetize it and augment the amount of time people spend on it, something fan pages on Facebook and MySpace don’t do.

On SuperFan, people set up a profile and then select from a variety fan pages of celebrities, TV shows or other pop culture items to designate as their “Faves.” As people build up a collection of “Faves,” they can make quizzes, blog or play games related to them. It also offers people the chance to compete to become a “SuperFan.” They do so by buying “credits,” a virtual currency that can be bid to control a fan page and add content to it (it costs $1 to buy 1,000 credits.) For example, if you’re a big Britney Spears fan, you can bid credits against other fans to control the page dedicated to her. If you win and are crowned the “SuperFan,” you have the ability edit the page, deciding, for example, which profile picture of Britney it should run.

“Bringing gaming to social media has been more successful than any of us would have thought,” said Marini of the decision to employ such a model. “If you can get users really engaged (in a game), to the point that it’s competitive and ego-driven, people are willing to pay for that.” Indeed, social gaming companies such as Zynga and Playfish have enjoyed lucrative success on Facebook and MySpace.

It remains to be seen, however, whether SuperFan can draw people away from MySpace and Facebook to its site. But with MySpace floundering to get its act together, it’s a perfect time for a new competitor to enter the social network ring.

Enough is enough. It’s time for Eric Schmidt to resign from Apple’s board. Sure, Apple and Google have a common enemy in Microsoft, so at one time it made sense for Google CEO Eric Schmidt to have a seat on Apple’s board of directors. But Apple and Google are competing on more and more fronts, Android and Chrome OS being among the most prominent examples.

The FTC apparently agrees, as it’s reportedly looking into whether the fact that Schmidt sits on Apple’s board is anticompetitive. When news of the inquiry was first reported back in May, Schmidt told reporters that he didn’t think “Google [saw] Apple as a primary competitor.” In Sun Valley yesterday, following the Chrome OS announcement, Schmidt said, “I’ll talk to the Apple people. At the moment, there’s no issue.” Google’s general counsel, meanwhile, has argued that there’s a “safe harbor” provision in the antitrust laws for companies that don’t have overlapping revenue.

Well, Google doesn’t really make any revenue outside of advertising, so there’s no risk of overlap there. But they are competing with the following:

• Android vs. iPhone
• Google Chrome OS vs. Mac OS X
• Chrome vs. Safari
• Gmail vs. MobileMe
• Picasa vs. iPhoto/MobileMe
• Google Calendar vs. iCal
• Google Docs vs. iWork.com

Schmidt began recusing himself from meetings at which the iPhone was being discussed after Google launched Android. Does that mean he’s going to start recusing himself from meetings at which the topic is Mac OS X? Or Apple’s Internet strategy? So what’s the point of him being a director? (C/Net has made these points in a post last week. Fake Steve Jobs does a great job of breaking things down in a classic and must read post.)

Come on, Apple. Being friendly with other companies is all well and good — but by having Schmidt on the company’s board, Apple is opening itself up to more antitrust inquires from an unfriendly Department of Justice and the FTC (even if Google and Apple employees overwhelmingly donated to the Obama campaign). Eric Schmidt, it’s time to go.

Or just merge the companies and get it over with. Goople has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Photo courtesy World Economic Forum

I just saw that Amazon has launched a new, special store — dubbed Amazon Wireless — that sells wireless service plans and devices from U.S. carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Sprint and T-Mobile USA are coming to the store soon. To be fair, Amazon is playing catch-up with San Francisco-based specialty e-tailer, LetsTalk, which offers more options when it comes to plans, carriers and devices. It also has a 10-year head start.

Nevertheless, it is safe to predict that thanks to its dominating presence on the Internet, Amazon will be a formidable competitor to LetsTalk. The clean and easy-to-use design, description of devices and quality of reviews alone ensures the future of this offering. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years from now it becomes a king-maker in this high-volume business. I am frankly surprised that it took Amazon until now to do this, considering that it’s been offering mobile plans and special deals for so long. Wireless retailers get a nice chunk of change from the carriers for the deals they bring to the party.

The big question is if this is a new strategy, that of micro-stores focused on specialist markets. It had launched Endless, a specialty shoe store back in 2007. And Amazon bought Dpreview.com, a digital camera review site, in May 2007. How about a digital photography-focused store, or a cooking-related store. What do you guys think?

CoTweet, a Twitter application made with businesses in mind, announced today that it received $1.1 million in funding, joining a small — yet growing — group of Twitter-focused startups that have received investor financing. The investors behind CoTweet include Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, SV Angel, Maples Investments and Freestyle Capital.

CoTweet, which publicly launched in beta today, is a collaboration platform that lets multiple people at a company send tweets on up to six corporate Twitter accounts and keeps the messages in sync across all the accounts. The San Francisco-based upstart is the newest member in the small club of funded Twitter-focused startups, which altogether have been backed with quite a chunk of cash. As of June, ChubbyBrain found that VC firms and angel investors have invested around $23.3 million in 11 Twitter-related startups, including Stocktwits, Twitvid and Twitterfeed.

The CoTweet platform works with Bit.ly, a URL shortener created by New York-based incubator Betaworks, which received $2 million in funding back in March. CoTweet’s clients already include big corporate players such as Whole Foods, JetBlue and Microsoft — not bad for a year-old startup.

Was yesterday’s hurried Google Chrome OS announcement designed to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder ahead of a big launch on Monday? Robert Scoble certainly thinks so, and although he can’t say what that big news is, Long Zheng speculates that it might be the launch of the Microsoft Office web app. The timing is right: The Office 2010 Technical Preview ships this month to invitation-only testers and close integration of a new web app with the next version of Office is a logical move.

Microsoft originally announced it was working on an Office web app last October, at the 2008 PDC. As I noted in a report for GigaOM Pro (subscription required), moving Office into the web makes a lot of sense. It would give its 500 million worldwide users the full functionality of Office on their desktops, combined with the collaborative and access-anywhere power of the cloud, and would also neatly address the challenge posed by the cloud-based office software of Google and Zoho.

Microsoft’s current online storage facility, Live Workspaces, is underwhelming — it doesn’t have online editing capabilities and can’t compete with Google Docs for collaboration. Many of Office’s users have been longing for a well-designed online version of the suite. Perhaps Monday’s announcement will provide it for them.

The folks over at MySpace sure have a lot on their plate, and the pressure is mounting. It’s no secret that the News Corp.-owned social network is playing catch-up with Facebook’s rising traffic, and the expiration date on its advertising deal with Google is looming. Now, in addition, U.S. advertising spending on MySpace is expected to fall 15 percent in 2009 to $495 million, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing a study from research firm eMarketer.

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, and the rest of the MySpace team better start making headway with their turnaround strategy for the social network — and fast, or falling behind in traffic won’t be its only Facebook-related worry. U.S. ad spending on Facebook is expected to rise 9 percent to $230 million in 2009, and the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is on track to exceed MySpace in advertising dollars by 2011, according to the Journal. Though Van Natta has been shaking things up at MySpace with a series of layoffs in the U.S. and abroad, it’s going to take more than downsizing to help the floundering social network regain the status it once held — if it can at all.

But MySpace isn’t the only one in trouble. Online advertising on social networks is expected to be down sharply from previous estimates in December. According to the Journal:

EMarketer predicts that U.S. ad spending on social networks will drop 3 percent to $1.1 billion this year. In December, it projected growth of 10.2 percent for 2009 to $1.3 billion.

A lot can happen before 2011, and MySpace will need to work something out with Google before that funnel of advertising revenue is cut off. MySpace still leads the social networks in U.S. advertising dollars, according to the Journal, and Murdoch has expressed that News Corp. is working hard to improve MySpace. It will be interesting to see how and when these changes on MySpace will happen, especially as Facebook keeps chugging ahead with over 200 million users and counting.

Want to know what’s going on right this second? Real-time search engine OneRiot is launching (right now!) an API that widget and app makers can use to tap into its stream of real-time content. The search engine, which is focusing heavily on real-time content — social networks, freshly uploaded videos, and newly created blog articles — helps users find what’s happening right now on the web. It’s a booming business.

Google VP and search maven Marissa Mayer thinks real-time search is hugely important. She told the UK Guardian:

[R]eal-time search is incredibly important and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of us finding out something like, you know, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those sorts of patterns, so there’s a lot of useful information about real time and your actions that we think ultimately will reinvent search.

OneRiot launch partners include Microsoft, Scour, Yoono, Nambu and Shareholic — and prospective partners can go to wiki.oneriot.com for more information. The API is, of course, free — but by approval only.

There sure are a lot of people writing about the Google Chrome OS. The pair of Googlers who wrote the blog post that kicked off the media frenzy included all the right buzzwords: “open source,” “lightweight operating system,” “netbooks,” and “community.” So exciting! I almost think the working title should have been “Google Chrome OS Is Going To Change Everything.”

The sentiment in the Chrome OS announcement is that there is nothing that Google can’t improve upon. “[T]he operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web…[Google Chrome OS is] our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.” An auspicious goal, to be sure — much like Google Wave, the company’s attempt to re-think, in its words, “what email would be if it were invented today.” But go a little deeper down the rabbit hole, and suddenly Google Chrome OS looks awfully familiar to another breakthrough product: the iPhone.

In June 2007, just before the iPhone was released, app developers didn’t have an SDK to play with — which at the time, Steve Jobs touted as being a good thing, saying:

And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and AJAX apps that look and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone, and these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, check email, look up a location on Gmaps…don’t worry about distribution, just put ‘em on an internet server. They’re easy to update, just update it on your server. They’re secure, and they run securely sandboxed on the iPhone. And guess what, there’s no SDK you need! You’ve got everything you need if you can write modern web apps…

Engadget felt it was “weeeeeaaaak.” Gizmodo said “No SDK sucks.” They were right, of course. Two years later, the fully SDK’d iPhone App Store has more than 50,000 apps that together have been downloaded more than a billion times. Web apps, then and now, are far from being the Next New Thing. And Google’s Chrome OS? Again, from the company’s blog post:

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.

The fight for the netbook operating system just gained a new challenger in Google with the announcement of its Chrome Operating System. Although the Chrome OS is slated for various x86 computers, its initial target is netbooks, on which Google expects to see it running by the second half of 2010. Which begs the question: What’s so special about netbooks that they need their own operating system? And which of the current or planned OS environments is best suited for these devices?

Most operating system efforts in the netbook area have been misplaced from the beginning. Time and again we’ve seen desktop environments shoehorned into small screens with meager hardware. Windows, OS X, and most of the standard Linux distros work well on full-sized laptops and desktops, but aren’t optimal for a more portable device. While it’s appealing to have a consistent UI and desktop application support on these little laptops, consumers are challenged with poor performance and an interface not designed for a WSVGA or WXGA display. Which is why Google and others feel there’s room for a netbook-specific operating system.

An even better way to answer the question of why a netbook OS is to ask the following: Would you want your desktop environment crammed into your smartphone? What would happen if it was? How would you use the “big” interface on such a small screen? The answers are the very reasons why Microsoft developed Windows Mobile and why Apple has reworked OS X to fit on the iPhone. Perhaps the smartphone example is more extreme than the netbook case, but the same logic applies. And like a smartphone, the ideal use case for a netbook is to get connected to the web and run relatively low-powered software that isn’t CPU-intensive.

So who’s in the game, what do they have to offer netbooks and where do they fall short? Here’s my take, including each player’s odds of success:

• Microsoft (4:1) – Windows Vista proved to be far too much for lowly netbooks to handle. Windows 7 shows much more promise as it runs well on limited hardware. But as with any desktop operating system, it’s not as effective in a mobile device. There’s simply too much extra baggage along for the ride that isn’t needed for web use and light application support. Windows Mobile might fit the bill, but Microsoft hasn’t announced any intentions to port it from ARM to x86 devices.
• Apple (50:1) – If it does happen, you’ll only run Mac OS X on an Apple-branded netbook. Since there is no such device, this is the longest of shots to happen in the near term. I’ve dabbled with the hackint0sh crowd to install OS X on a netbook and while it works, the experience falls short. Again, the OS is designed to fit on bigger displays with higher resolution. Running OS X in a 1024×600 resolution gets old quickly.
• Intel (10:1) – What goes better with chips than dip? In this case, the dip is called Moblin, which stands for Mobile Linux. Intel has backed this open-source mobile OS since 2007 and the first few beta efforts show promise. The interface is focused on getting you to the activities you’d most likely do with a netbook: email, web surfing, updating social networks and playing digital media. Your calendar events are readily viewable as well, lending some homage to the PIM functionality of today’s smartphones.
• Linux (20:1) – Many have tried and many have failed to bring Linux to netbooks. Return rates on the first netbooks were high because consumers weren’t familiar with the Linux environments. To a large degree that has changed for the better, thanks to Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix Edition, but there are simply too many custom Linux distros. So many that consumers will never see the consistent look and feel they crave. Custom versions have included Acer’s Linpus Lite, HP’s Mobile Internet Experience, and ASUS’s Xandros distro with a dumbed-down interface.
• “Instant-On” Linux solutions (15:1) – A sub-section of the Linux crowd has made some inroads on netbooks this past year. Folks like DeviceVM and Phoenix Technologies offer nearly “instant-on” Linux partitions that quick access to the web, email and productivity suites. These run in place of the main operating system, but as they’ve added more features, I’ve argued they could become full-fledged mobile operating systems in their own right. However, they’re still maturing and also face the consistent look challenge.
• Google (3:2) – While I called for Android on netbooks last year, I like the idea of the Chrome OS even better. Yes, it’s a browser sitting on top of a Linux kernel, so technically you could lump it with the Linux points above. But there’s a few key differences that will help Google find success. Google’s web services offer a very consistent look and feel. They already have a massive user base used to that consistency. And to loosely borrow a line from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, they’re not skating to the puck, they’re skating to where the puck is going to be.

There’s plenty of commentary about how the Chrome OS will be too limiting and that web apps are much ado about nothing. But folks in this camp are “skating to the puck” and equating tomorrow’s web-based operating system with today’s computing paradigms. What about the future with HTML5 standards, allowing for more application-like functions in a browser? Why discount the freedom and opportunities that cheaper and more widely available wireless broadband will bring to netbooks? And won’t wider development adoption and maturity of Google’s Gears allow for far more offline opportunities in Chrome OS? WebworkerDaily’s Simon Mackie is ready for — and all but predicted — a web OS last month in his GigaOM Pro piece (subscription required). He envisions apps on a web OS offering that elusive productivity nirvana that we’ve been waiting for:

“If the web apps were well designed, you could even work on the exact same documents on your smartphone, effortlessly keeping all of your data in sync and accessible from anywhere, on any device.”

Remember that Google is talking about an operating system that’s a year or more away. There’s so much that can happen on the web in a year or two. A year ago, I didn’t envision recording video on my phone and having it appear on YouTube with the press of a button. I didn’t forsee that my computer would determine its location solely by using a database of Wi-Fi access points. Nor did I predict that little laptops costing $300-$400 would sell by the tens of millions. I sure missed some interesting trends when I was “skating to the puck,” but this time, I’m heading down ice and waiting for the pass that puts a web-based operating system on my mobile netbook in 2010.

Without a doubt, Google stole the spotlight with the announcement of its upcoming Chrome operating system late yesterday and sent everyone buzzing about the search giant’s very public swipe against Microsoft. But amid all the chatter on the Web, Stacey Higginbotham warned on GigaOM that we shouldn’t get too excited just yet since Google still has to tackle the gargantuan task of convincing carriers that selling netbooks with the OS is the way to go. Instead, the Chrome OS announcement signals the company is another step closer to creating an advertising operating system that “extends across all devices and all screens.“ Across the GigaOM Network at WebWorkerDaily, Simon Mackie had a hunch that Google would be making this move soon (read his post on GigaOM Pro; subscription required) and says it makes a lot of sense now that the majority of people’s computing activity happens on the web.

Even though Google’s “initial aim is to ease onto the desktop through the netbook arena,” jkOnTheRun’s James Kendrick believes the operating system would be a great fit for smartbooks, too. And what does Chrome OS mean for Apple? While some think the new operating system may put pressure on Apple’s software, TheAppleBlog argues that the real impact will be felt by the company’s hardware in the future as casual users looking to purchase a new laptop are likely to be attracted to “Chrome-toting devices.” One thing Google and Apple both share is loads of hype surrounding their latest announcements, OStatic points out, even though the two companies sometimes don’t turn out winning products in the end. OStatic provides a list of what things Google has and does not have in its favor when releasing Chrome OS.

Updated: Today Google went wild and announced its plans to create the Chrome operating system, which it says will be designed to run on netbooks. But it’s really an attempt to keep Google relevant as an advertising powerhouse as consumers begin spending more time playing with web-connected apps than the web itself. It’s the search giant’s reaction to a wholesale change in computing driven by ubiquitous wireless access and mobility. The Chrome OS is another step in allowing Google to create what we’ve called the OS for advertising — an ad platform that extends across all devices and all screens.  So let’s break it down:

First the Features:

• Chrome OS will run on both ARM and x86-based chips and is designed for netbooks.
• The architecture is Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.
• Apps developed for Chrome OS will run on Google Chrome OS, and on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux.
• Designed to boot and get folks on the web in seconds.
• Designed so viruses and malware aren’t an issue.
• It’s not going to be out until the second half of 2010 on consumer netbooks.

What It Means:

• Google sees a browser-like experience being key to netbooks and believes that rather than just surf the web, consumers want to play and use the apps.
• Microsoft, which has not ported its Windows 7 to ARM-based chips that will be designed into the future version of netbooks, and which has priced Windows 7 for Intel-based netbooks fairly high, will be scrambling if Chrome OS succeeds.
• The fact that apps designed for Chrome OS will work anywhere should attract developers to the platform, and as we know, developers are the new kingmakers in today’s app-focused world.
• While the world was waiting for Google’s mobile Android OS on netbooks, Google has suddenly pulled Chrome OS out of its hat. James over at jkOnTheRun calls it a case of classic misdirection. Google explains that Chrome OS is for the web, while Android is for devices — from phones to set-top boxes. We wonder why Chrome OS wouldn’t be more appropriate for the so-called fourth-screen devices.
• Building a special-purpose, lightweight browser specifically for the netbook might address some of the difficulties that developers were having porting Android to netbooks, such as issues porting to a keyboard-based user interface rather than touchscreens and trackballs.
• This all follows in line with Google’s love of everything in the browser, such as its embrace of HTML5 that makes it easy to bring a desktop experience (especially with video) seamlessly to the browser.
• Chipmakers betting on ARM-based netbooks such as Qualcomm and Texas Instruments will win if the user experience is robust enough to wean people from their familiarity with Windows.

Why Computing Needs to Change

The promise of broadband everywhere is changing the way we can communicate online. Google’s Chrome OS may or may not make it, but the attempt shows how far the industry has come from a bulky PC chained to a desk by its power cord and Ethernet cable. The computer is evolving from those dinosaurs to a smaller, mobile model that is always connected to the web. The iPhone brought us apps that are lightweight so users don’t get bogged down by smaller processors and slower wireless web connections on mobile devices. Google’s Chrome OS attempts to keep that speed, while preserving a platform for Google to make money through advertising. But it’s far from a done deal.

Why We’re Not Going to Get Too Excited Yet

• It’s not coming out for a year. A lot can happen in a year.
• Launching a browser is one thing (and so far, Chrome has received mixed reviews) and building an OS is another, and right now this is an announcement, not a product.
• Does the world need a netbook-focused OS?
• Can Google convince carriers, which aren’t big fans of the search giant, that selling netbooks with Chrome OS is the way to go? Most analysts expect carriers to become a huge distribution channel for netbooks.

If Google wants to be the advertising OS, its products need to deliver the optimal web experience on every device. Judging from some of the Google blog post notes, the Chrome OS will have instant-on and act as an interface between a netbook and the web, rather than feel like a traditional OS. In fact, it almost sounds like a…browser. Which may be the point, since Om argues that the browser is where the action will be in the coming years, and as we consume more of our web experience through apps, a full-fledged browser seems a little clunky.

Chrome OS isn’t expected to land on consumer devices until the second half of 2010, but by designing it for the new model of computing, Google has the potential to affect the netbook market like the iPhone did in the cell phone world. And since Microsoft decided not to port its Windows 7 software to ARM chips, which was going to be a thorn in the side of Qualcomm and Texas Instruments as they tried to design netbooks that could attract consumers already familiar with Windows, Google’s Chrome OS has an opening. TI has already lauded Google’s efforts. So while we’re not getting too excited, we’re definitely going to watch this develop. In the meantime, check out what everyone else is saying around the web in our handy compilation above.

Update: Google has added some information noting that the Chrome OS will be free, and listing a few of their partners in this endeavor, including several notebook makers and chip companies making ARM-based application processors for netbooks and smartphones.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Martinez.

I woke up this morning to see the whole world talking about Google’s new operating system, Chrome OS, that is targeting  netbooks and desktops. I spent a big part of the morning reading many different stories and posts — and they say absolutely nothing, apart from chunks of information from the original blog post, which is, well, a lot of words that say nothing much. Meanwhile, The New York Times has the best overview of the Chrome OS announcement, so don’t bother reading anything else for now. The guys at jkOnTheRun sum up the release of the OS succinctly when they write:

A web, or cloud, OS that puts the bulk of all user activity firmly up in the web. No heavy lifting on the user’s netbook; that will all take place up in the cloud with the Chrome OS handling it all. This is so clever on Google’s part, and could very well turn the next page on cloud computing.

Stacey is currently working on our analysis, but I was hoping to get a conversation started with our community — what do you make of this new development? Do you think Google has what it takes to beat Microsoft, or will this prove to the the equivalent of a Hollywood starlet, hot today, not tomorrow?

It was only a matter of time until the economic downturn started chipping away at the confidence U.S. employees harbored towards their job safety earlier this year. As employers have continued to make cutbacks over the last six months, more Americans say they’re willing to bite the bullet and make job concessions if it increases their job safety, Glassdoor, a Sausalito, Calif.-based startup, found in a recent survey.

Six months ago, more than half of U.S. employees couldn’t fathom taking a pay cut, but now 42 percent are willing receive a lower paycheck if it increases the likelihood that they’ll keep their jobs. Employees are also willing to do more than just take a pay decrease — nearly three-quarters are willing to take on more responsibilities at work and 64 percent would work longer hours to increase their job security. That rise could be contributed to the fact that one-third of employees believe it’s unlikely they will find a job within six months if they were laid off, a view that remained unchanged from earlier this year. Plus, there’s a lot more job competition than before since unemployment hit a 26 year-high in June.

It’s no surprise that salary expectations have come down sharply from six months ago as bonus cuts are becoming more common. Fifty percent of employees believe they won’t get a pay raise in the next twelve months, up ten percent from this past December. This isn’t much of a surprise as slightly more than twenty percent reported their employers cut bonus amounts in the last six months.

A sliver of optimism remains: only one-in-four American employees fear they will be laid off in the next six months, down two percent from December 2008. Employees who work at companies that have recently gone through layoffs are more fearful, however, as 39 percent say they’re concerned about being laid off in the same period. Even though more employees are willing to work harder with less pay just to keep their jobs, many still think they’re less likely to be on the chopping block than their colleagues — 41 percent think their employers will lay off their other colleagues rather than themselves. What do they say – bad things happen to other people.

Nike’s Shambhala initiative, which kicked off in 1999, aimed to transform Nike’s approach to social and environmental issues. A series of workshops brought together sustainability gurus, speakers and more than 50 managers from across Nike’s many divisions to discuss ways to push the envelope on internal and product-focused sustainability. The events were hugely successful, but the challenge, says Justin Yuen, a former intranet developer turned corporate social responsibility manager at Nike, was finding a way to keep that sense of community and engagement among individual participants after they returned to their teams.

Traditionally, employees had two methods of communicating with one another: email and the company intranet. The former, while dynamic enough to support actual work, lacked transparency, longevity and opportunities for collaboration. The intranet, on the other hand, was great for sharing static information across teams and individuals. Neither, however, reflected how people actually worked together. So in 2004, Yuen left his position in Nike’s corporate social responsibility team, and set out on his own to develop a product that could do better. The result was fmyi — as in, “for my information” — and it’s a rare success story in the web 2.0 landscape: a social-media-infused enterprise collaboration tool that’s been profitable since two years after its founding.

Fmyi, which is billed as an “online social workspace,” blends elements of Basecamp, Highrise Facebook and Friendfeed to create a remarkably flexible, natural system for enterprise collaboration. Unlike Basecamp, for example, which creates rigid buckets for projects and teams, fmyi recognizes that users belong to multiple groups, and not only need different access to different individual projects, but may also need to share discussions across parallel projects. The site’s organization and architecture support this (see screenshot below), with filters for how information is shared, profile pages, featured content items controlled by the site admin, and different ways of sorting and organizing the same pieces of content. The system also indexes documents uploaded to the site so the content — not just file names and associated messages — are easily searchable.

As a long-time Facebook user and Basecamp advocate, I was impressed with fmyi’s toolset, which seems to reflect the way many of my friends and colleagues have become used to collaborating — in an ad hoc, dynamic way, with an emphasis on transparency. At the same time, it’s devoid of some of the weaknesses other systems I’ve tried often share, such as a lack of security or robust permissions and a constant tug-of-war between information overload from a firehose-like stream of content and overly segmented pockets that restrict sharing. The question of social context for content is one that Facebook has been trying to answer with new privacy filters — perhaps the team should ask Yuen for some pointers. (The two sites speak a similar design language already, and fmyi users can expect a new UI even more reminiscent of Facebook later this summer.)

In some ways, it’s this relationship to consumer social networking tools that’s driving growth for fmyi. Yuen says he’s seen an uptick of interest in the social media-like aspects of fmyi’s solution, and the company is tweaking its marketing and development priorities in response. The $275 million enterprise social media space (GigaOM Pro subscription required) is growing rapidly, as the success of consumer social networking sites has begun to filter into the business world, with heavyweights like Microsoft SharePoint and smaller companies like Jive all angling for a piece of the pie. But Yuen says he’s not feeling pressure from the influx of new competitors: the company’s revenues for the first half of 2009 have already exceed all of those from 2008, despite the economic downturn.

While the market’s growth has helped make potential customers more aware of the ways such solutions can improve productivity and solve workflow problems, Yuen’s quick to point out that it’s not just overall market growth driving fmyi’s success. There are many solutions on the market, but “no one has really done it well and cracked the code,” says Yuen. From his perspective, fmyi’s main selling point is that its social tools are all organized within workflow, allowing companies to reap significant productivity benefits. (For example, MTV show “Room Raiders,” which uses the system for casting and production schedule management, was reportedly able to cut the length of an average workday to 9 hours from 14 hours after adopting the tool.)

Yuen is also experimenting with using social media as a way to launch and monitor sustainability projects. Through a partnership with the Northwest Earth Institute, fmyi will offer an online discussion course around workplace sustainability within its platform and offer tools for tracking sustainability projects that emerge from the course. Yuen says the company will begin a pilot with two companies “soon” and launch the template for more widespread use later this summer.

The Portland, Ore.-based company, which has been profitable since 2006 without any external investment, currently hosts 6,000 sites. Clients include HBO, Sony, Nike (although it’s using fmyi for product groups, not sustainability efforts these days) and AFLAC (field agents use it for tracking customer relationships). Hyatt is one large company leveraging the company’s sustainability expertise; the hotel chain uses fmyi to coordinate its Global Sustainability Initiative. As far as Yuen is concerned, fmyi’s roots in the sustainability movement may help it work with clients more successfully than its competitors: “Social media and sustainability are both about culture change,” he says.