Back in January, we had mentioned that Aaron Greenspan had offered up three $5,000 grants in memory of Aaron Swartz, for certain key improvements to RECAP, the browser extension that automatically uploads PACER documents to the Internet Archive, making them publicly available. The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton -- where RECAP was initially developed -- and Greenspan have now announced that two grants have been awarded: one for creating a Chrome browser RECAP plugin and another for extending the capability to work with the appellate courts as well. While it's cool that these grants have been given out, it's even cooler that RECAP is now available for Chrome. If you're a PACER user and a Chrome user, go get the plugin now...

Because no new products can be released these days without getting sued for patent infringement, Google has been sued by EMG Technology -- yet another patent holder that isn't actually competing or innovating suing companies that are. The issue is Google's recently released Chrome browser for the mobile phone, which EMG claims violates its patent, 7,441,196 on an "apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content." EMG points out that Apple sought to have this patent re-examined and it survived. Despite the fact that the inventors of the patent all appear to reside in Southern California, EMG is located in Southern California and Google is based in Northern California, take one guess where this lawsuit was filed... Why East Texas, of course. Because that makes no sense at all. And people wonder why we say that the patent system has become a tax on innovation.

The big antitrust case in the US against Microsoft about a decade ago focused on Microsoft's efforts in the browser war to lock out Netscape. While Microsoft lost that case, regime change at the DOJ meant that Microsoft got a slap on the wrist, rather than being broken up (as was originally proposed). In the long run, this may have been the best solution anyway. The market itself realized soon after that there was a pretty big opening for an innovative and effective web browser, and new competitors sprung up and took market share away from Microsoft: first Mozilla's Firefox, then Apple's Safari and finally Google's Chrome (and, yes, there have been a few smaller players as well, but they're all pretty small). Either way, given that Microsoft technically lost the antitrust case filed against it, and the key reason was its efforts to block the use of Netscape, you would think that the company would be a bit more sensitive about blocking competing browsers.

However, a war of words is brewing between Microsoft and Mozilla over the fact that Microsoft is effectively banning native third party browsers on Windows RT -- which will effectively become the "mobile device" version of Windows. On top of that, the company apparently is blocking the use of certain APIs that would be useful -- and which Microsoft's own browser will be able to use.

It's easy to assume nefarious intent on the part of Microsoft, but reading through the details, it feels more like a case where Microsoft is growing jealous of Apple's control over the iPhone platform, and is effectively looking to do some of the same with its next generation mobile offering. I think that's pretty short-sighted. Denying third party browsers may have worked for now, for Apple, but that's driven (in large part) by the larger than life infatuation with Apple products. I'm not sure any other company can pull it off -- especially Microsoft.

The way to compete with Apple is to attack where it's weakest -- and that's by being more open. Instead, it looks like (in typical Microsoft fashion) Microsoft has decided to try to attack Apple by copying where Apple is strongest -- in its walled garden. And, in the process, the company may end up setting off some antitrust alarm bells. Oh, and also, along the way, it will severely hurt its own platform by limiting the types of useful innovations that others might provide. That doesn't seem like a very smart business plan.

Well, this is interesting. Earlier this week Aaron Wall noticed that Google's Chrome team appeared to be sponsoring blog posts about Google that have direct links to Google Chrome, without any attempt to hide those from search bots... in contradiction to the rules that it has for others against buying links. Danny Sullivan dug into the details a little bit more and found that it was "jaw-dropping" in how it clearly violated Google's own rules, and just how ridiculous the entire campaign appears to be.

In response, Google has basically said that it never signed up for such a campaign, and appears to suggest that the advertising firm it hired was part of the problem. That firm, Essence Digital, more or less took the blame. However, Sullivan also notes that the actual campaign appears to have been run by a video company called Unruly. The whole thing seems like a mess, with Google not closely monitoring the companies it hired for the marketing campaign.

Either way, Google actually does appear to be taking this seriously -- as its anti-spam team is saying that it's going to reduce the Google PageRank for the Chrome team. That's actually fairly surprising -- as you basically have a company agreeing to punish itself for breaking its own rules, whereas most companies caught in this kind of situation would likely try to brush it off as not important...

There have been a string of similar "deals" announced recently (though we do wonder about the details), but Microsoft has announced that Qanta is the latest company to "license" its usage of Android and Chrome. Here's Microsoft's quote on the subject:

"We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Quanta, and proud of the continued success of our Android licensing program in resolving IP issues surrounding Android and Chrome devices in the marketplace."

Let's sit back and consider the sheer insanity of this entire effort. Microsoft is going around, trying to get lots of companies to buy licenses to Google's products, when there is simply no evidence that those products infringe on any Microsoft patents. And, notably, Microsoft has never sued Google over those products.

I'd be interested to see if anyone can explain how a system that allows a company like Microsoft to set up a licensing business on someone else's products without any proven legal basis other than the implied threat that they might sue, is a functioning system? It's a huge joke.

I spent the last couple days at Google's big developer conference, Google I/O. While officially a developer conference, the event is often a window into Google's overall thinking on where it's headed. There are a lot of new products and features shown off -- some more ready for prime time than others. The clear takeaway from the overall event is that Google doesn't just believe that we're moving to a more connected world, it's grown sick of waiting for everyone else to develop it, and is laying the groundwork itself. So much of the event was about new offerings that enable more advanced things to happen via the internet and via devices. From a standpoint of pure geekery, it's pretty cool to see that vision in action.

However, there was one other thing that became abundantly clear at the event, and it's that Google is on an internal collision course with itself. Day one of the event was all Android, all the time, and day two of the event was Chrome, Chrome and a little more Chrome (for good measure). With Android, the talk was basically about expanding Android everywhere. While Google had rushed out a separate and distinct version of Android for tablets, it is bringing the tablet version and the phone version back together and also looking to put it on other devices (e.g. Google TV will be powered by Android as well). On top of that, Google is looking to expand the overall purview of Android, by making it easier to control all sorts of hardware and devices as well. The vision, effectively, is that Android becomes the remote control for, well, everything. Others have tried similar strategies and failed, but it's ambitious, and sooner or later someone's going to figure it out, and Google has as good a chance as anyone.

On the Chrome side, the company continues to make improvements to Chrome itself, increasing performance massively, and continuing to allow people to do more with HTML 5 directly in the browser. On top of that, Google is really ramping up its "Chromebook" strategy of offering very cheap computers with the "ChromeOS" and with built-in cheap or free wireless.

Of course, this raised all sorts of questions about the fact that both strategies are on a clear collision course, and it's not obvious that Google has any plan on what to do about it. This shouldn't be a surprise. Two years ago, when Google first announced the Chrome-as-operating system strategy, our very first reaction was that it was going to lead to conflict with Android. And that was clearly on display at the event. Asking folks from either team about this odd split would lead to mumbling and dancing around the question. It seems clear that the two teams don't have much, if any, collaboration going on, and both are charting their own courses that seem to be starting to encroach on each other's territory. That's most obvious with Google TV. While the product has been slow to catch on, the original version was focused on Chrome, but it sounds like Android is now taking over.

Now, there's something to be said for some internal competition. It helps drive both groups forward, and lets them take different and experimental approaches in a new world where what's going to work is a huge unknown. Traditionally, though, if most companies allow for such competition, it's usually an upstart "skunkworks"-type operation against a legacy operation. In this case, it's two upstarts. And the risk there is what happens when they clash. The fact that there's no Chrome browser on Android (and the default Android browser is pretty bad) just seems bizarre.

At some point, Google is going to need to merge these two strategies, rather than just let them fight each other. Perhaps the big thinkers at Google think that time is further down the road, but it seems like soon would be a good time to start integrating the strategies. For now, however, it seems happy to let the two just remain on the collision course. And while I have no doubt that they believe both strategies are important, it wasn't hard to read the tea leaves as to which of these two Google is betting more on: the entire third floor of the Moscone Center was about Android. In contrast, Chrome had a much smaller section at the back of the second floor. Google may claim that it's treating the two equally, but its actions scream loudly that the big bet is on Android.

There have been rumors for years that Google might someday release its own operating system, but the announcement that it's turning the Chrome browser into an operating system is an odd duck for a variety of reasons (amusingly, the "Google browser" was also rumored for years before Chrome showed up). Why is it odd?

• Google already has an operating system in Android. While that was initially focused on mobile devices, it's already being expanded to netbooks, so turning that into a more complete operating system seems like the way to go.
• Chrome itself still needs a ton of work. I've tried using it, and it's crazy buggy and so unstable -- I simply gave up and went back to Firefox. Jumping from just browser functionality to a full on OS before the browser code is really stable seems like a big leap.
• The idea of turning a browser into an operating system has been around since the days of Netscape (folks there used to talk about how it was making Windows obsolete), but reality has proven otherwise. In fact, it was partly Netscape's desire to take down Windows by making Netscape more OS-like that caused Netscape to get so bloated as to be nearly useless.
• Why now? Why an OS? Part of the appeal of the growth of the web itself (and Google with it) is the fact that it's made the whole operating system less and less integral to the computing experience. With the move towards more of a "cloud" based world (which Google has been a big part of driving) there just isn't as much value in the operating system as much as in the past. So why jump on that bandwagon now?
• Given all of the above, it just seems like a confused strategy. There will likely be conflicts between Android and Chrome and consumer confusion as well, not to mention worries from folks who just want Chrome to be a simple, competent browser.

Perhaps Google can route around all of these issues, but at a first pass... it just seems like a confusing direction for Google to go in.

The NY Times is running an article about a bunch of illustrators complaining that Google offered to promote their work for free as special skins for its Chrome browser. The concern? That Google wouldn't pay them to promote their work. Of course, that's fine. They can (and many did) choose not to accept this free promotion, but it's difficult to understand what sort of statement they think they're making. As Google noted, it found plenty of takers for the chance at such a great channel for promotion, so all those artists who stood by their "principles" will suddenly find out that for all their complaints about not being "paid" by Google, lots of artists will get a lot more exposure, and hopefully most of them are smart about turning exposure into money. Google wasn't asking the artists to do anything new, but to reuse an existing work -- but from that, it's likely that people will learn about these artists, and that could (or should) easily lead to new work. The cost to artists is next to nothing, but the potential payoff is quite high. So why deny it? It's the same silly entitlement mentality that has people think that for every use of work they've already done they must get paid. It's a failure to recognize that exposure is a form of payment, and widespread exposure from a brand like Google should be quite easily monetizable. People who think compensation only comes in money are going to have a lot of difficulty succeeding in the digital era.

As we had mentioned, the original numbers that were coming out about people switching to Google's Chrome browser seemed a little difficult to believe. And, in fact, it appears they were. New reports are suggesting that while a bunch of folks may have kicked the tires on Chrome, the shine came off pretty quickly, and plenty of people have simply gone back to their original browsers. This really shouldn't be a surprise. While some people found Chrome to be clean and relatively fast, it didn't really offer much beyond that. That doesn't mean that it won't eventually make inroads into the market, but simply throwing up yet another browser with the Google brand on it isn't enough to convince people to switch. It needs to actually offer a significant and noticeable difference -- and so far that hasn't happened.

Seth Godin thinks Firefox is missing the point by launching new features in response to Google Chrome. He says the problem now is that "when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn't get better." Firefox needs to provide people with an incentive to spread it, so that the more people use it, the better it gets for users (think of a social networking site -- you have a better experience if more of your friends join). He suggests new communication and collaboration features that only work if you have Firefox.

I think he's missing the point.

He ignores the Firefox community. The life of a Firefox user does improve as the user base grows. A more vibrant community means better add-ons, bug fixes, security patches, phishing reports, translations/dictionaries, etc. -- all members benefit. Mozilla is already providing the sort of incentive he describes. Sure, there may be ways to improve, but I don't think they're missing the point.

Plus, "only for Firefox users" isn't the Mozilla approach. Mozilla wants to improve the web for everyone -- not just Firefox users. Mozilla thinks your browser should be like your phone or your car; it shouldn't matter if your friends or co-workers are using the same product. You don't need to consider which phone carrier your friend uses before making a call, or which car your co-worker has before providing directions; you shouldn't have to think about what browser someone uses before communicating with them online. People don't need special browser-specific features in order to communicate browser-to-browser, that's what web services (or add-ons) are for. Those kinds of features would make life on the web more difficult for everyone if they were Firefox specific, and if they weren't, Google could just implement them in Chrome.

The community is one thing Firefox has that Chrome can't copy overnight.

If you read some responses to Chrome from people at Mozilla, it doesn't seem like they're missing the point. Competition in the browser market is validation of Mozilla's mission for Firefox, and Mozilla plans to compete by continuing to innovate and to involve the community. Seth Godin makes a great observation about giving people an incentive to spread your product -- "people will recommend something if adoption improves their lives" -- but he doesn't mention the ways in which Mozilla has already taken that to heart. How do you think Firefox became popular in the first place?