If you have one of the few Android devices currently running Ice Cream Sandwich, then you’re going to love this post. The rest of you, including those of you on iOS, will have to gaze longingly for a while.

Because Chrome just landed on Android.

It’s faster. It syncs everything (provided you want it to). It has nifty transition effects and a more intuitive system for jumping between tabs. And it’s also loaded with potential.

Google’s Chrome browser, which has skyrocketed to popularity since its debut in 2008 and consistently gets top marks for being the fastest browser in town, has long been strangely absent from Android. To be clear, Android has always shipped with a browser of its own — and it actually shares much of the same codebase with Chrome, including the V8 JavaScript engine. But next to the real Chrome, it’s a clear wannabe. After using it for a day, I really have no intention of using the older browser again.

Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, Chrome is only available for Android 4.0 and higher — which means the vast majority of Android users won’t be able to take advantage of it yet (devices that support 4.0 at this point include the Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, and the Nexus S). Google says this was done in part because Chrome needs to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features that were introduced in the latest build of the OS. If you have a device that supports it, you can download it right here.

So what makes Chrome great? Let’s take a look at the features.

The most obvious difference between Chrome and the stock Android browser is the UI.

For one, Chrome comes with the browser’s gray color scheme, rather than the ICS ‘Holo’ styling. Browsing through the app you’ll notice plenty of subtle effects that contribute to the browser generally feeling more polished. Tabs slide in when they open, and fade out when they’re closed, which helps you stay oriented in the app. The ‘all tabs’ button, which includes a number to indicate how many tabs you currently have open, pulls up a ‘stack’ of your open tabs that you can slide around to get a better look at the tab’s content before you actually open it.

Another nice touch: if Chrome notices you’re trying to tap an area that has a dense cluster of links (in other words, you might have trouble tapping the right one), it’ll launch a neat magnifying pane so that can you tap the one you want.

But the changes run far deeper than the UI. My favorite is the support for sync.

For some time now, the desktop versions of Chrome have allowed you to connect a Google account to your browser, allowing you to sync browser history, bookmarks, apps, autofill, and other data between multiple computers (in other words, if you have a laptop and a desktop machine, you can ensure they’re configured the same way). Now you can hook your Chrome mobile app to your Google account too.

The syncing feature comes with a neat trick: open up Chrome on your phone, and you can see a list of all of the tabs you currently have open on your computer’s copy of Chrome, which is awesome if you’re frequently having to email yourself directions or links to various product reviews. Better yet, this works even if you’ve shut the lid on your laptop and it’s in ‘sleep mode’ — though if you exit out of the browser entirely, the list will go blank.

(As an aside, if you’re looking for these features and are on an older Android device, check out Firefox for Android, which can do many of the same things).

And then there are the speed boosts. Chrome definitely feels snappier, no doubt in large part to its hardware acceleration. It also comes with several speed-related features like pre-fetching — Chrome will automatically begin loading the page it thinks you’re visiting next (it only does this on Wifi by default, though you can change it to work over your mobile connection as well). It also includes some key features that the stock browser doesn’t, like Web Workers and WebDB. One thing it doesn’t have: Flash, because Adobe stopped development on mobile Flash. Can’t say I miss it.

But while Chrome is definitely a major upgrade, its Beta tag is well deserved, because it’s actually missing some subtle features found on the stock Android browser. The most noticeable omission is the lack of a ‘Request Desktop Site’ feature, which made its debut in the browser that ships with Android 4.0. If you’ve ever browsed to a site from your phone, only to find that it detected your mobile browser and served up an inferior, “mobile-friendly” version of what you were looking for, then you’ll appreciate that tiny checkbox. It’s missing on Chrome for now, but it seems obvious that it’ll be added at some point.

As for the long-term outlook, Chrome is looking great. Extensions aren’t part of this launch, but they are inevitable. And while Android 4.0 will continue to ship with its stock browser for now — which means it will live side-by-side with Chrome — down the line Chrome will be replacing that stock browser (it’s a little unclear how exactly this will fit into the Android Open Source Project, but for starters much of the code from the mobile client will be upstreamed to the Chromium project).

Oh, and as for you iOS users? I asked Google’s VP of Chrome Sundar Pichai whether Google had considered building on top of iOS’s WebKit-based browser (they wouldn’t be able to introduce Chrome’s rendering engine, but they could potentially offer the syncing features). Pichai didn’t rule this possibility out, but it sounds like an iOS version won’t be coming any time soon — for now, the team is watching how the Android version is received.

Google has just released its Q4 2011 results, and they didn’t live up to Wall Street’s expectations.

Wall Street’s consensus for the quarter was $10.49 in non-GAAP earnings per share and $8.40 billion in revenue. Google missed on both counts, with EPS of $9.50 and net revenue of $8.13 billion.

Google shares are down around 10% in after-hours trading.

It’s not all bad news for the company. The release points out that Google surpassed $10 billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s history (before deducting traffic acquisition costs). It is also announcing that it has 90 million users on Google+ at this point, which is more than double what Page announced last quarter (I’m more curious to know how many of those users are still engaged with the social network).

Google’s headcount grew from 31,353 last quarter to 32,467 — an increase of 1,114.

There will be an earnings conference call with Google execs beginning at 4:30 PM EST; stay tuned for more posts with our coverage of any further details revealed by Larry Page and company.

From the release (you can find a full slide deck, including charts, embedded below):

Google reported revenues of $10.58 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2011, an increase of 25% compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the fourth quarter of 2011, TAC totaled $2.45 billion, or 24% of advertising revenues.

Google reports operating income, operating margin, net income, and earnings per share (EPS) on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. The non-GAAP measures, as well as free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, are described below and are reconciled to the corresponding GAAP measures at the end of this release.

Google has just announced that it’s named Diane B. Greene, a cofounder and longtime CEO of VMware, to its Board of Directors.

Greene is also Intuit’s Board of Directors where she is also on the Audit and Risk Committee and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.

Greene was formerly President and CEO of VMware from 1998 through 2008, leading it to a $625 million acquisition by EMC in early 2004, and, in 2007, an IPO on the NYSE. In 2008 she was ousted by the company she cofounded, reportedly in part over disputes with EMC Chief Executive Joe Tucci.

In a press release, Google executive chairman (and former longtime CEO) Eric Schmidt is quoted as saying:

“Diane is a special person who combines a sharp business acumen with a brilliant technical mind,” said Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google. “We know she will be a great contributor and we are grateful to have her insight.”

Updating

Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you haven’t already. They’ve given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage.

And today, Google is launching an update to its core search engine at Google.com that continues this trend — and then some. They’re calling it ‘Search plus Your World’.

The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared. Any of these personalized matches will appear alongside ‘normal’ search results. And Google will also pull in photos shared on Picasa or Google+ (they’ll even show up if you’ve marked them private, but they’ll still only be visible to you).

This is probably easiest to understand with an example, so here goes. Say I was to run a query for the term ‘Harry Potter’, as I am wont to do.

For most people, this would probably pull up links to the books, the films, and a variety of fansites. For this intrepid reporter, though, the results would also include my Picasa album shot at a Harry Potter premiere a few years back (and labeled as such). These images would pop up both in the main search results page, and in Google Images results. Likewise, any blog posts my friends had shared on Google+ about the boy wizard would show up in my results too.

This may not sound like a huge deal, but it’s foreshadowing a bigger change to come: Google is going to increasingly become a search engine for all of your stuff.

It’s starting small, with Google+ and Picasa integration. But over time we’ll likely see results from Google Docs, Gmail, Contacts, Music, Voice, Wallet, and so on. You’ll go to Google.com, type in whatever it is you’re looking for, and you’ll see both your own content alongside web results. It’ll be an Omnibox for everything, and if it figures out a way to incorporate third-party data as well (be it through partnerships or APIs), it could be very powerful.

Of course, Google isn’t confirming any of that yet (they don’t comment on future releases, etc.). But when I posed the scenario to Jack Menzel, Product Management Director of Search at Google, he seemed to indicate that I was on the right track.

Anyway, that broader search functionality is still likely a ways off. So let’s get back to the things that are being introduced now.

Today’s launch also uses Google+ data for another purpose: helping you search for information about people whose names typically make that a difficult task. Say you wanted to run a query for someone named Roger Smith on Google. This would typically be pretty tough, as there are a bunch of people named Roger Smith. But with this launch, Google is making things potentially easier.

Type in a name in the new version of Google, and an autocomplete box will pop down that includes results from Google+. You may see several Roger Smiths, but you’ll also see their profile photo, current city, and a link to their Google+ profile. Click the one you’re looking for, and Google will try to serve up results pertaining to that particular Roger Smith.

Which is both cool, and, to some people, potentially frustrating. There are plenty of people who, for whatever reason, have photos or blog posts online that they’d rather not have other people find. Some of them are fortunate enough to have a common name (or to share a name with a celebrity) that ensures these stories don’t get surfaced very often. This could change that.

Google is also going to start promoting certain Google+ users within search results. Search for ‘music’, for example, and you may see a handful of prominent musicians on Google+ (say, Britney Spears), along with some handy ‘Add to Circles’ buttons. This could be interesting as a sort of topic-specific suggested user feature (particularly if it works on niche topics), and it’s also obviously a way to promote Google+ to users who have yet to sign up or have stopped visiting.

Finally, the launch includes a few options for managing the new features. A new tab will let you select either the ‘Search plus Your World’ results, or you can toggle back to the old-fashioned, unpersonalized results. There’s also an option in Google settings that will let you opt out of the experience entirely. Google also points out that SSL is now turned on by default for all signed-in users, which is even more important now that it’s personalizing results.

To be clear, this is far from the first time Google has personalized results. It’s been doing so for years, with products like its ‘Social Circles’. Even the now-defunct Google Desktop Search would incorporate files stored on your hard drive into your web-based search results. And the idea of integration social with search isn’t unique to Google, either — Bing has had a longstanding partnership to use Facebook data in its results.

The key, Menzel says, is that Google is getting a lot better at figuring out when to incorporate this socially relevant data. They’re focusing in part of showing content not simply because your friend shared it — but because it might actually be helpful. And, as I said easier, this is really just a taste of things to come. Expect to see Google+ integration go deeper, and for more of Google’s other services to be accessible via one single, universal search.

Since the launch of Google+, Google has been putting a lot of muscle behind promoting and integrating the service into its core products. Fire up a new Android 4.0 device, and you’ll be prompted to create a Google+ account if you haven’t already. They’ve given it TV ads, not to mention a priceless promotion on its homepage.

And today, Google is launching an update to its core search engine at Google.com that continues this trend — and then some. They’re calling it ‘Search plus Your World’.

The short version is that Google search results are going to be automatically personalized (to a greater degree than they were already) for each user, with signals drawn from your Google+ Circles being used to highlight things your friends — or you, yourself — have shared. Any of these personalized matches will appear alongside ‘normal’ search results. And Google will also pull in photos shared on Picasa or Google+ (they’ll even show up if you’ve marked them private, but they’ll still only be visible to you).

This is probably easiest to understand with an example, so here goes. Say I was to run a query for the term ‘Harry Potter’, as I am wont to do.

For most people, this would probably pull up links to the books, the films, and a variety of fansites. For this intrepid reporter, though, the results would also include my Picasa album shot at a Harry Potter premiere a few years back (and labeled as such). These images would pop up both in the main search results page, and in Google Images results. Likewise, any blog posts my friends had shared on Google+ about the boy wizard would show up in my results too.

This may not sound like a huge deal, but it’s foreshadowing a bigger change to come: Google is going to increasingly become a search engine for all of your stuff.

It’s starting small, with Google+ and Picasa integration. But over time we’ll likely see results from Google Docs, Gmail, Contacts, Music, Voice, Wallet, and so on. You’ll go to Google.com, type in whatever it is you’re looking for, and you’ll see both your own content alongside web results. It’ll be an Omnibox for everything, and if it figures out a way to incorporate third-party data as well (be it through partnerships or APIs), it could be very powerful.

Of course, Google isn’t confirming any of that yet (they don’t comment on future releases, etc.). But when I posed the scenario to Jack Menzel, Product Management Director of Search at Google, he seemed to indicate that I was on the right track.

Anyway, that broader search functionality is still likely a ways off. So let’s get back to the things that are being introduced now.

Today’s launch also uses Google+ data for another purpose: helping you search for information about people whose names typically make that a difficult task. Say you wanted to run a query for someone named Roger Smith on Google. This would typically be pretty tough, as there are a bunch of people named Roger Smith. But with this launch, Google is making things potentially easier.

Type in a name in the new version of Google, and an autocomplete box will pop down that includes results from Google+. You may see several Roger Smiths, but you’ll also see their profile photo, current city, and a link to their Google+ profile. Click the one you’re looking for, and Google will try to serve up results pertaining to that particular Roger Smith.

Which is both cool, and, to some people, potentially frustrating. There are plenty of people who, for whatever reason, have photos or blog posts online that they’d rather not have other people find. Some of them are fortunate enough to have a common name (or to share a name with a celebrity) that ensures these stories don’t get surfaced very often. This could change that.

Google is also going to start promoting certain Google+ users within search results. Search for ‘music’, for example, and you may see a handful of prominent musicians on Google+ (say, Britney Spears), along with some handy ‘Add to Circles’ buttons. This could be interesting as a sort of topic-specific suggested user feature (particularly if it works on niche topics), and it’s also obviously a way to promote Google+ to users who have yet to sign up or have stopped visiting.

Finally, the launch includes a few options for managing the new features. A new tab will let you select either the ‘Search plus Your World’ results, or you can toggle back to the old-fashioned, unpersonalized results. There’s also an option in Google settings that will let you opt out of the experience entirely. Google also points out that SSL is now turned on by default for all signed-in users, which is even more important now that it’s personalizing results.

To be clear, this is far from the first time Google has personalized results. It’s been doing so for years, with products like its ‘Social Circles’. Even the now-defunct Google Desktop Search would incorporate files stored on your hard drive into your web-based search results. And the idea of integration social with search isn’t unique to Google, either — Bing has had a longstanding partnership to use Facebook data in its results, and it will also serve up posts your friends have shared alongside its search results.

The key, Menzel says, is that Google is getting a lot better at figuring out when to incorporate this socially relevant data. They’re focusing on showing content not simply because your friend shared it — but because it might actually be helpful. And, as I said earlier, this is really just a taste of things to come. Expect to see Google+ integration go deeper, and for more of Google’s other services to be accessible via one single, universal search.

It’s Google Zeitgeist day — the annual event where Google rounds up the year’s top search queries and trends to present a data-centric recap of the last twelve months (minus, ahem, any adult searches).

Most of the Zeitgeist data went live this morning — see our earlier post for the top trends overall. Spoiler: Rebecca Black took the top spot.

And now Google has given us some additional datapoints that haven’t been published yet, which focus on electronics — namely, the top gadgets, the top consumer electronics, and the fastest rising consumer electronics. I’m not sure exactly how Google defines a gadget versus a consumer electronics product (I asked and was told gadgets are a subset of CE), though I’m guessing it has something to do with the device being portable. Note that these lists apply to the United States, only.

Apple has a commanding lead on the Top Gadgets list, holding four of the top ten spots, including the iPod at #1. But there’s one striking omission: the iPhone doesn’t appear among the Top Gadgets at all. Amazon’s Kindle (and Kindle Fire), the Otterbox, Nook, Zune, and even the defunct Palm all bested it. I actually had a hard time believing this, but a spokesperson confirms that I am reading the list correctly — the iPhone simply isn’t on it. That said, the iPhone does appear twice in the fastest-rising list (as the iPhone 4S and the elusive iPhone 5).

Also worth noting: Amazon has a very strong showing here. The company has famously (and frustratingly) never disclosed firm Kindle sales, but based on the number of searches it’s got plenty of traction among mainstream users. As does the Kindle Fire — and that name wasn’t even publicly known until late September.

Top Gadgets
ipod
kindle
ipad
nano
kindle fire
otterbox
nook
ipad 2
zune
palm

Top Consumer Electronics
xbox
ipod touch 5g
sony
ps3
camera
canon
ipod touch
kindle
nikon
playstation

Fastest Rising Consumer Electronics
kindle fire
ipad 2
psn
dre beats
otterbox
amazon kindle
playstation
iphone 4s
htc thunderbolt
iphone 5

No, Google is not launching super-creepy facial recognition, so put those pitchforks down. But it is introducing a new feature to Google+’s photo app, which now makes it a bit easier to quickly tag your friends. It’s called ‘Find My Face’, and while the name leads me to recall scenes in the classic Nic Cage/John Travolta film Face/Off, it’s a feature that plenty of users will find handy.

It’s pretty straightforward: opt into Find My Face, and the next time one of your friends uploads a photo that you’re in, they’ll see your name as a suggested tag. It’s very similar to the semi-automated facial tagging that Facebook launched earlier this year, though with one key difference: unlike Facebook’s feature, which automatically opted users in, Google is asking for explicit permission before it turns it on.

Of course, the fact that the feature is opt-in means that fewer people are going to be using it. Google+ will be presenting a dialog to users the next time they visit any photo on Google+, and I’m guessing that they’ll continue to present similar reminders over the coming months for any users who haven’t chosen either to explicitly opt-in, or indicated that they don’t want to. The option will show up in this settings page.

Google’s history with facial recognition is interesting — Eric Schmidt, who at the time was the company’s CEO, previously disclosed that facial recognition was the only piece of software Google had ever held back, over concerns around privacy and potential for abuse. Because this feature is opt-in, though, and is only available to people who you know (either on Google+, or its other services like GChat), the potential for abuse is minimal.