There has been already lot of talking and discussion about Google Chrome OS, since Google announced a new OS. The fact that Google is now venturing into a field that it once considered untouchable is very surprising. Though Google reasons that today we don’t merely access websites; we use web applications and therefore need more stronger and lighter OS, I have a hunch that they want to finish Microsoft once and for all.

I remember the Google guys once saying that they would not consider entering the operating systems business as it was limited to the offline (desktop) medium. But now Google plans to launch an OS that will be online, free, secure and most importantly open source. This will allow the users to customize the OS as per their needs and requirements, which sounds very cool.

Google announced that it is working on an operating system based on Google Chrome (their browser). The OS-in-progress is simply called Google Chrome OS;  it is open source, and it will initially be aimed at netbooks and available in the second half of 2010. Now this move by the search engine giants will definitely impact Microsoft, who has been dominating the operating systems space since the last decade or so.

Google says the key aspects of Chrome OS (that distinguishes it from other OS) are:

• Speed
• Simplicity
• Security

Even if Chrome OS releases in 2010, its pretty clear that Google won’t be sitting and waiting to get reviews of their OS to start their next phase. They have already started to talk to hardware companies so that the OS can be shipped with the desktop systems as well.

A post on the Google Chrome Blog says that the Google Chrome OS team is working with an impressive list of computer products corporations including Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. Though the post doesn’t mention Intel, but Dan Nystedt says that Intel is secretly working with Google on Chrome OS.

One thing is evident that Google has decided to go after Microsoft’s core business after MS tried to go after Google’s. If Google makes good on its promise of allowing users to get right to the web in seconds, the OS will likely be appealing to a lot of consumers who are used to Windows. And given the popularity of the Google brand, Microsoft will be forced to get into action to save its business.

What do you think?

Probably the arrival of Bing has created lot of ripples in the industry. Every day there is so much spoken and written about Bing, its positives, its negatives, its features and many more points. Almost everyone associated with the search engines has been publishing their views, thoughts and reviews about Bing and whether it can displace Google as the #1 search engine.

But Paul Savage, a web programmer and SEO specialist had other ideas to when Bing was launched. Instead of reviewing it, he developed a cool tool which allows you to compare search results for Bing and Google at the same time.

I tried searching for the keyword – ‘i am sam’ and here is the screen shot of what I could see.

Now its interesting to note that both these search engines are giving different search results. I won’t dwell into the review part, but one thing is for sure that Microsoft has made it very clear that they are not going to allow Google to play the monopoly. It has been a long time that Google has been the most used search engine, and Yahoo and Microsoft have been fighting for the remaining bits and pieces, but not any more. MS has taken the first step to make this search industry more competitive and I am happy about it. This is so because this competition will give us a chance to witness some great innovations that may be round the corner.

By the way, if you are a Yahoo faithful, you are not lucky enough to compare the results for Yahoo and Bing. I am afraid, you will have to stay contented with search results for Google and Yahoo for the time being.

Guess what?

Bing – Microsoft’s popular search engine which was launched couple of weeks ago has earned a PageRank for itself. Managing a comfortable PR 2 in just 20 odd days is amazing. Many webmasters struggle for months to start their PR counter.

Another striking feature is that if you type the keyword Bing in Google, you will see that www.bing.com occupies the top position on the SERP, displacing www.bing.org. Displacing an .org site in 20 days is not easy.

Also, the backlinks that Google show for Bing are well above 24,000. Whoa! Thats quite a number.

All these happening have left me ponder over a few questions.

1. Google’s Sandbox – Why did it not apply to Bing?

2. If Bing attracted more than 24,000 backlinks in less than 20 days, then it is OK with Google. But if any other website earns even more than 10 backlinks in a day, then it is treated as SPAM. Why this partiality?

3. For the keyword – ‘Microsoft‘, Bing rank on the first page of the Google SERP. Mind you that Bing has been stripped off the meta tags and only contains the keyword once on its home page. So how did Google’s algo determine the relevance of Bing with Microsoft?

I have many such questions which will be always puzzle for  SEO Company or firm. I am still trying to find answers to them, but if you are lucky enough to find them before me, feel free to share them via your comments.