Google Innovations

Google has been particularly busy recently with two big launches in the last week: The Google Chromebook and Music Beta, a music streaming service.

Google Chromebook
The Chromebook was unveiled last week at Google's I/O conference in San Fransisco by Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management at Google, who claimed it was ushering in the new era of 'cloud computing'.
Manufactured by Samsung and Acer, the Chromebook will run on the web rather than the computer’s software, so apps, documents and settings will be saved in the cloud enabling it to run much faster than a standard computer and boot-up will take just eight seconds.

The Chromebook is targeted at businesses and educational companies, presenting a direct challenge to Microsoft, whose Windows 7 operating system dominates, with a 78.6% global market share in 2010 (Gartner research company).

The computers go on sale in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain on 15th June. The Samsung version will go on sale in the US at $429 (WiFi only) and $499 (WiFi & 3G – free 100MB/month), whereas the Acer model will retail slightly cheaper at $349. In the UK, the Chromebooks will cost £349-£399.

Music Beta
Google Music will work in a similar way to Google Documents - tracks can be uploaded to Google's servers and then be streamed anywhere. Google has not struck any deals with labels or music publishers possibly because the service will allow consumers to stream data they already own, but there will be a limit of 20,000 tracks. The app can be downloaded on selected Android phones and tablet such as the Motorola Xoom.

This application has had mixed reviews. Many users have found it slow and the presentation poor. There is also no option to delete music once it has been uploaded, although you can remove it from playlists. It also seems that not only is it impossible to delete tracks, but when you’ve downloaded the app, it’s impossible to get rid of! The only positive review I could find was that it is “not terrible – everything is better than the original although there is no lock screen when changing songs”.


Sources
Market Android.com
Marketing Magazine.co.uk
Stuff (Issue 146)