Google's computer programme: from search engine to operating system - Telegraph.co.uk

A relentless torrent of news has poured from Google over the last week. On Monday the firm announced a phone, made in partnership with Samsung, that it hopes will rival Apple’s iPhone; next it announced the release of its own operating system, which it hopes will in due course come to rival Windows, the software that forms the basis of most computers on the planet. Today it is back in its heartland of search, revealing the most and least looked for words and phrases online, from people to aspirations.

What is telling however is not Google’s ability to capture a year in review. Of course people were searching “I love football” and “I hate football” in a World Cup year, and of course David Cameron was another top term after the Conservatives formed a Government. But what’s much more interesting is how these results show that Google is now a part of the furniture. People type in “I feel lonely” or “I love dance”.

More and more people are entering those Google searches into Google’s own browser, Chrome, too. This week the company announced that 120 million people are using the stripped down browser that has set a trend that others such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have also followed. This time last year, just 40 million people were using Chrome, so the growth is extraordinary. Just as Google took over from incumbents such as Yahoo with web search, it could yet discover a similar trajectory for the browser, because switching is comparatively easy.

Far more challenging than that, however, is Google’s new ambition: Chrome OS is an operating system, which means it would form the basis of everything your computer does. Unsurprisingly for Google, it’s aimed at people who work mostly online. Speed, including booting up in seconds, security and simplicity are the key features.

Indeed, it’s because of the growth of the internet, itself catalysed by Google, that Chrome has come about. More and more applications are now web-based: so email, word processing, music and presentations all happen online. Google’s new phone, for instance, includes a feature called “listen to”. So say “Listen to Kylie Minogue” and it will go to the web, find what tracks you can access and start playing them. This is very different from previous models where users who wanted to listen to music needed to download specific songs, install programmes to play it and organise their libraries. Now, on the phone or in a browser very “thin” software is required, because the web does all the work. It’s a long way from just a few years ago when, say, installing Microsoft Office meant using countless floppy disks.

Brian Rakowski, Google’s director of product development, says, “We launched Chrome because many of us were spending all day in the browser and the browsers weren’t quite up to the task. We wanted them to be simpler, speedier and more secure. Now we’re seeing that a lot of people who are just living in the browser don’t need all the other features in an operating system.”

Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice-president of product management, adds that the approach is genuinely novel compared to how an operating system such as Windows currently works. “The model is fundamentally different because it’s a whole different approach to security. With other operating systems, users have to maintain their applications, protect their data and so on.” Pichai says that with Chrome OS, there’s only really one application, Chrome itself, and therefore everything else is online.

If that approach meets users’ needs, it could almost spell the end for computer viruses, because the prospect of downloading anything would become a thing of the past. Chrome OS also uses a clever technique that means it verifies everything is as it should be every time it starts up. And because Chrome OS is so thin itself, it’s very quick. Such speed and security means it will allow Google to continue to push into business uses, too.

Not everyone is convinced of this plan: Ovum analyst Mike Davis says “Will these workers want Chrome OS on a device such as netbook? No they will want a tablet. Whether Google likes it or not, its former 'partner’ Apple has all of the current mind share on web connected devices with its iPad tablet, and it will have a second version of the iPad with an updated version of its own iOS before Chrome is officially released to the world in the second half of 2011.”

Indeed, Google’s current plan is to test a version of Chrome OS in limited markets on a bespoke laptop. Frequent updates will iron out issues with what is currently unfinished software. So Chrome is currently a long way from challenging Microsoft. But Google’s agenda is clear. As Pichai says, “Google has direct benefits when more people use the web; when people use Chrome and Chome OS we see a direct rise in revenue.” Internet searches are what the company is all about; whether it is making phones, laptops or tablet computers, getting more people online is the one ambition. Users pay for it by clicking on adverts.

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US tactics in Mideast talks criticized - Washington Post

JERUSALEM - The Obama administration's decision to stop seeking a new Israeli settlement freeze as a way back into talks with the Palestinians has diminished prospects of achieving a peace accord within a year and eroded U.S. credibility in the region, analysts said Wednesday.

The decision also represented a belated recognition that even if they had persuaded Israel to renew a construction moratorium in the West Bank for three months, U.S. officials would have faced an even more difficult problem after that expired.

President Obama understood "that after three months of a second settlement freeze, he would have found himself without any kind of agreement and facing repeated demands to extend the freeze again, necessitating another exhausting bargaining session" with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Akiva Eldar, political commentator for the Haaretz newspaper, wrote Wednesday.

Israelis and Palestinians traded blame Wednesday over who was responsible for the U.S. decision, which has left both sides perplexed about the way forward and hoping for clarity from a speech on the Middle East that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver in Washington on Friday.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the U.S. decision would have "grave consequences in the region.''

"If you cannot have him stop settlements for a few months, what do you expect to get out of him on Jerusalem or the 1967 borders,'' Erekat said of Netanyahu in an interview Wednesday. "I think Mr. Netanyahu knows the consequences for the American administration's credibility in the region.''

Israeli officials, who always were cool to extending a settlement freeze as a precursor to talks, said the Palestinians were to blame for insisting on including Jerusalem in the freeze. Still, the officials portrayed the change in American tactic as an opportunity for progress.

"That mechanism proved not to be effective and now we have to find an alternative mechanism to move this process forward,'' said an Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions. "As we go into this next stage of the peace process, we think the chances of it succeeding are even greater because of the close coordination with the United States.''

The administration, which in September set a one-year deadline for negotiations, expended enormous political capital over nearly two years by making a settlement freeze a priority. The effort rankled relations with Israel and inflated hopes in the Arab world that the United States could persuade Israel to halt construction in the West Bank and win further Israeli concessions down the road.

Instead, the United States ended up spending more time haggling with Israel over a settlement freeze than negotiating between Israelis and Palestinians over the core issues that divide them, analysts said.

"Trying to get a freeze . . . was always the wrong focus,'' said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator. "It forced the Obama team to either pummel the Israelis into one or bribe them. Neither worked. And now 20 months in, we have no freeze, no direct talks, no process, and no prospect of a quick agreement. Plus, our street credibility is now much diminished and our options are bad.''

After the 10-month Israeli partial moratorium expired in September, the Obama administration developed a package of incentives, including advanced fighter jets worth $3 billion, to entice Israel into extending the freeze for three more months. But talks on the extension collapsed, including over whether the United States would accept Israeli construction in parts of East Jerusalem that Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

"The significance of the U.S. decision to stop pushing for a moratorium . . . is that Obama is refusing to give Netanyahu a seal of approval to build in Jerusalem,'' Eldar wrote.

A Palestinian delegation, which was invited to Washington, won't travel there before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas consults in the coming days with the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee and his Fatah party's central committee, Erekat said.

Erekat also said in light of the breakdown and decisions by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay this week to unilaterally recognize Palestine as an independent state, the Palestinians would formally appeal to the U.S. to do the same.

As for West Bank construction, the Israeli official said Israel will continue to build in existing settlements in the West Bank but will not expropriate more land for new settlements.

Israel's security cabinet on Wednesday also decided to allow for expanded exports out of the Gaza Strip. An Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said that the policy would be fleshed out in the coming days, but in principle, exports of agricultural produce, textiles and manufactured furniture would be among the items that Palestinians in Gaza would be permitted to export abroad or to the West Bank.

Israel has limited exports as part of a blockade of the Gaza Strip that is designed in part to put pressure on the Hamas-led government that seized power there in 2007. The international community has pressured Israel to allow the resumption of exports.

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Democrats in Senate warming to tax deal - Washington Post

Senate leaders are planning to begin debate on a far-reaching tax package as soon as Thursday as rank-and-file Democrats warm to an agreement between the White House and Republicans to extend a host of expiring tax cuts and pump fresh cash into the economy.

Democrats were still angry Wednesday about what they viewed as President Obama's capitulation to GOP demands to preserve tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, particularly a deal to exempt estates worth as much as $10 million from a revived inheritance tax. But lawmakers said the magnitude of the concessions Obama won came into sharper focus Wednesday as the White House highlighted independent forecasts predicting that the package could create as many as 2.2 million jobs next year.

For a second day in a row, White House officials made the rounds on Capitol Hill, stressing the economic significance of their deal with Republican leaders to preserve tax cuts that are set to expire on New Year's Eve, extend long-term unemployment benefits through next year, and create major new tax breaks for businesses and individuals aimed at spurring investment and consumer spending.

While Vice President Biden and House Democrats met into the evening, White House budget director Jacob Lew and senior Treasury adviser Gene Sperling held an afternoon session to field questions from Senate Democrats, who were more accepting of the package than they were a day earlier in a meeting with Biden, participants said.

"Members are more open today as they read the analyses of this package," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the chamber's No. 2 Democrat. Citing prominent liberals such as John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, and Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who endorsed the White House plan, Durbin said, "These are people that progressives respect and go to, and they've said positive things."

Durbin added that "I just loathe" parts of the deal, such as the provision on the estate tax. But he said: "I understand the predicament that we're in."

Biden faced a far tougher crowd in the House, where a fractious caucus dominated by angry liberals is emerging as the bigger legislative obstacle to the tax plan. During a two-hour meeting, dozens of lawmakers lined up to interrogate the vice president about the deal - almost all of them speaking in opposition, participants said.

"There remain very serious reservations on the House side. I think that there's still a very serious question whether this package can pass in the form it's in now," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said afterward. Van Hollen represented House Democrats in bipartisan talks about the tax cuts that were rendered moot when the White House began dealing directly with Republican leaders, a slight that rankled nearly as much as Obama's decision to abandon the long-held Democratic position of opposing tax breaks for the wealthy.

Many Democrats, including Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House leader, emerged from the meeting saying they could not support the package unless major elements were changed, particularly the estate tax provision.

Most Democrats would prefer to renew the tax, which lapsed last year, with a 45 percent rate on estates worth more than $3.5 million for individuals and $7 million for couples. The Obama-GOP deal would impose a 35 percent tax on estates larger than $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples for the next two years. If that change were made permanent, it would add $100 billion to deficits over the next decade, Democrats said.

In a forceful presentation, however, Biden made it clear that big changes are not in the cards. "The vice president said: 'This is the deal. Take it or leave it,' " an irritated Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) said, paraphrasing Biden.

The tax debate is a central piece of a broader strategy to wrap up the legislative session by Dec. 17. The House and the Senate are scrambling to complete unfinished business. This includes a major resolution to continue funding the federal government through Sept. 30, 2011, approved by the House on Wednesday, as well as smaller measures, such as a plan to protect doctors from a sharp cut in Medicare payments, which cleared the Senate by voice vote Wednesday night.

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