TechCrunch posted an article and the video below about a concept Google Tablet OS based on Chrome. My reaction? Eh...

To be honest, I haven't been very impressed with any of the products that Google has released besides the dominating trifecta of Search, Maps, and GMail. Pretty much every other product that Google has released is pretty ho-hum. I'm not counting services that Google has bought like YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, GrandCentral (Google Voice) etc. which are great products. To name a few in no particular order:

* Orkut
* Android
* Google Shopping
* Google Checkout
* Google Finance

The telling one here is Android. I have used an Android phone (not the new Nexus One, but the Droid) and found it to be supremely disappointing versus the iPhone. Supposedly, the Nexus One is supposed to be better but from all the online demos I've seen of the Nexus One, it's incrementally better than the Droid but not by leaps and bounds. Unlike Microsoft, I don't see Apple getting complacent about their product development and Google has a lot of ground to make up.

So news comes today that Google has pulled out of its proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo. I once said that an independent Yahoo is good for the entire online ecosystem. I still believe that today but I have a hard time thinking that Yahoo can survive without the added cash-flow that the Google deal would have provided. The latest amended deal sent to Congress would have limited the time-frame of the deal to two years and set the maximum revenue that Yahoo could generate from Google at 25% of its search revenue. I thought this was a great compromise but I guess that wasn't what Google had originally wanted.

My first job was at a database marketing consulting firm which had Apple as its client. This was back in 1996 when Apple wasn't doing too well. Gil Amelio was CEO and the company was floundering. One of his final acts was to buy NeXT which would lead to his eventual ousting and the return of Steve Jobs. I remember in 1997, Steve Jobs is giving one of his first "Stevenotes" and in the middle of the speech, who would appear on the big screen behind him but Bill Gates to announce a $150 million investment in Apple. Thought sacrilegious at the time, this investment would provide the capital that Apple needed to carry out its plans to launch the first generation iMac and iBook. The rest is history. Maybe Yahoo needs something similar - a little jolt of outside investment from an old enemy. The question is ... Microsoft or Google?