Tech Olive

According to NetMarketshare.com, Google Chrome has hit a 10% browser market share for the first time ever. Of course, this is at the expense of Firefox and Internet Explorer, which both took a slight hit. They are now at 22.75% and 56.00%, respectively. Safari has been ever so slightly increasing over the past year to gain 6.30% and Opera is keeping a steady share at 2.28%.

via [Maximum PC]

Anyone else notice that Google made a minor (yet major) change to the Gmail homepage? They replaced the Reader link at the top with Photos. If you’re a frequent user of Google Reader, this most likely pissed you off in some way. However, if you’re using Google Chrome, there’s a quick fix in the form of an extension. It’s called Put Reader Back and it does just what it says. Install it and then after a quick refresh, the Reader link should be back to normal.

via [Download Squad]

This is sort of one for the ages. One of the largest companies in the world will be going through a CEO change as of April 4th, which was mentioned in their Q4 earnings report. Co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as head hancho. Schmidt, who was Google’s CEO since 2001, will stick around as Executive Chairman and will be an advisor to Page and other co-founder Sergey Brin. In a blog post by Schmidt, he detailed that Page is now “ready to lead,” and “will merge Google’s technology and business vision brilliantly.” There wasn’t a particular reason why the CEO swap was made, but we all have our guesses that it might not have been as smooth and friendly as anyone hoped.

[Google Investor Relations]

As a matter of fact, that orangeish-yellowish Google Street View guy has a name, and it’s Pegman. For Christmas, Pegman’s getting a Santa Hat to wear as he prances around wherever you place him. Neat!

On a similar note, Google and NORAD have teamed up to give you a real-time map of where Santa is located as he delivers those toys to all of those good girls and boys. Check it out here.

Epic Vid of the Week is a weekly series that showcases an awesome video that we or our readers discover. Some you may have seen before and others you may have not. If you’ve discovered any videos that are worthy of an Epic Vid of the Week title, let us know!

We all should know by now that Google has their own operating system for netbooks called Chrome OS. In this video, we’ll see the Cr-48 netbook get destroyed several times in creative ways, but at the same time we’ll learn about some of the advantages of using a Chrome OS machine.

We had a feeling YouTube would do this eventually, seeing that they kept increasing the maximum video length over the last several months. They have now completely gotten rid of a maximum video length, which means you can now upload that 45-minute long video of your mom singing different renditions of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In.’ However, this only applies to YouTubers who have been good boys/girls.

“…we’ll begin allowing selected users with a history of complying with the YouTube Community Guidelines and our copyright rules to upload videos that are longer than 15 minutes.”

As of now, there’s really no quick way to see if the limit as been lifted for you except to upload a video longer than 15 minutes and just see if it applies the limit or not.

[Official YouTube Blog via Download Squad]

So the day has finally come for the guys at Google to remove the duct tape from their mouths. They announced a few days ago that they were to unveil more details on Chrome OS and today they did just that.

First, they launched their Chrome Web Store, which has been vastly updated from when it was initially unveiled back in May. This is the place where you can get all of your Chrome extensions and themes, as well as different apps and games such as the NY Times, Sports Illustrated and even Plants vs. Zombies. The apps are compatible for both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS.

Google then moved on to the main event and handed out more details of Chrome OS. Frankly, it’s super fast. The company said that the only bottleneck is how fast you can physically navigate with the mouse/trackpad. That’s quite an impressive claim if we do say so ourselves. Google says that all the user’s data is encrypted by default and the operating system itself is loaded onto read-only memory that can’t be tampered without breaking the machine open and tinkering inside. As far as keeping the OS up to date, Google says they’ll send out automatic updates every few weeks to not only keep it up to date, but to hopefully make it faster and faster. The OS can also run in offline mode and any changes that took place will be automatically synced when it’s reconnected to the internet. As far as printing, you won’t be able to physically connect a printer to a Chrome OS machine. Instead, Google wants you using their new Cloud Print service, where you can wirelessly print to your home printer from any location.

Another big surprise is that Google even teamed up with Verizon on the Chrome OS project to bring 100MB of data per month for two years at no cost to every purchaser of a Chrome OS netbook. After the two years are up, you can vouch for a $9.99 plan that will give you unlimited access for a single day contract-free.

Now the sad part. Chrome OS is no where near completion, but we should expect netbooks to ship out sometime in the middle of next year. Acer and Samsung have said that they’re already on board to produce some Intel-based Chrome OS netbook. However, there’s currently one Chrome OS netbook model floating around that will be given to developers and a select few beta testers. The netbook is known as Cr-48 and the maker of this device is currently unknown. However, we noticed that the Caps Lock key is left out, which could only mean that Google doesn’t want us to yell over the internet.

via [Engadget]

Well looky here! Google has confirmed that they’re holding an event next Tuesday that will be focused on Chrome, which most likely means we’ll get a lot more Chrome OS details (finally). As always, we’ll update you with those details when the time comes.

via [Engadget]

Stephen Colbert is a funny guy indeed, but ultimately he’s an awkward guy to talk to. So when I saw that Google CEO Eric Schmidt would be on The Colbert Report, I had no choice but to watch it. It’s not a very long segment at all, but the two discuss Google’s involvement in our privacy and it’s just plain fun to watch Colbert deliver such sarcastic questions and remarks to his mostly serious guests. Watch the clip after the break.

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So it seems that those mysterious Google logos from the past couple of days have finally showed their true meaning (and my prediction was wrong). Google has introduced a new way to search by introducing Google Instant. It’s basically a real-time search feature, similar to Spotlight on Macs. Google says that this will save 2-5 seconds per search. It’s a good thing because my time is too precious to be waiting around for a couple seconds.

Try it out for yourself and tell us how you like it!

Thanks, Patrick.