Last thursday we saw the announcement for Google’s browser Chrome being taken out of its “beta” testing stage. This came as quite a shock to the web community as there were a few problems along the way, however the Chrome development team must be happy with their bug fixes, and the slick new browser has left “beta” stage with almost 10 million users.

Although Chromes 1% marketshare is probably on a gradual rise, expect a surge following the eagerly expected releases for both linux and mac. This public release really shows the web world how confident Google are with their browser against market leaders Internet Explorer and the awesome Firefox.

I’m pretty sure Google have a team dedicated to thinking up spots to include Adsense, and to be honest it can get a little bit over the top. Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land spotted a sneaky way in which single ads were incorporated at the top of the Search Suggest feature.

Not only will they induce misclicks, which im sure we are all guilty of from time to time, but will send traffic that converts rather poorly. Of course, these ads can be relevant, but there are limits. Google did send Danny an image of ads they are also testing which appear at the bottom of the listing. I agree with Danny that these are less intrusive and will result in traffic that converts at a much higher percentage:

I am a fan however, of the inclusion of related news articles at the bottom of some search suggests. These, are not paid inclusions and does not play on the individual to be tricked into clicking. Instead you can learn a thing or two with relevant articles from some decent newspapers.

As the Google developmers are continually put under pressure to create new spaces for ad units, i can’t help but get the feeling that new Google features are just made for the purpose of future monetization. Some ads spaces i expect (banner and skyscrapers ads), but some are just annoying!

Forgot to buy milk? Got a client to get back in touch with?

You might remember us writing a post on some useful web design tools for designers. Its always useful to make a mental note of things to do, and we have been really impressed with the simplicity of Adobe Air application Minitask. Minitask is painfully simple to use, it lets you organise your day in an easy drag and drop way. Its only limiting factor being that it is a desktop only application.

So surprise, surprise, Google have released a nifty task application for Gmail. The addon in its simplest form allows you to create and store tasks, so bin the post-it notes, banish the crusty old notepad and keep your to-do list with you at all times. (internet connection permitting of course!) Is there anything these guys wont do!? Give it a week or so, and we’ll be sure to see something else.

As if we couldnt have guessed, Google’s market share is still on the rise. comScores official search engine markshare data show Google representing a huge 63.1% share of the market, up from 58.5% during the same time last year. Struggling MSN Live search and Yahoo fared a little worse off, 8.5%, down from 9.7% and 20.5% down from 22.9% respectively.

Compared with 2007’s search engine stats:

comScore also estimated also estimate the rise in overall searches rose from 10.5 Billion last year to 12.6 Billion.

In another effort to showcase their talent to the digital world, Google have broken the record for sorting 1TB of data using their sorting software MapReduce. The search wizards managed to sort 1TB (stored on the Google File System as 10 billion 100-byte records in uncompressed text files) on 1,000 computers in 68 seconds. By comparison, the previous 1TB sorting record was 209 seconds on 910 computers.

Taking it up a level, the data centers tried the same experiment sorting 1PB (10 trillion 100-byte records) onto 4,000 computers with took six hours and two minutes. Thats quick sorting !

These figures may not mean much to you or I, but think of it this way… the more efficiently search engines can process the data they collate, the quicker we receive our search queries. So come on Google, bring on sub 50 seconds!

Google Mail (lets face it.. its awesome) has gone even quirkier, releasing a bunch of new themes for you to customise your inbox. If you log into your account, you can change the theme in the settings -> themes tab.

There are themes that change with the weather (you input your location and it tracks local weather reports, weird little character ones and some simple colour redesigns for the exisitng blue theme. Plenty to choose from, so get customising your Mail box!