When I first heard that Google was getting into the mobile smart phone operating system business, I was very excited. I respected the iPhone’s operating system and innovations but held off on getting one, satisfied with my Windows Mobile phone. But who knew the possibilities of innovation that Google would bring to the fold?

Fast forward to the past couple of months. HTC has released the Dream G1 Smartphone under T-Mobile with the first iteration of Google’s Android smart phone operating system. We’re starting to get our first reviews and hands-on impressions of the phone and of the operating system. So what’s the word?

Meh.

There are some quirks and omissions in the G1 that one would expect to be standard in a new smart phone suite, such as lack of Microsoft Exchange support, stereo Bluetooth, and video recording. The GPS functionality is also clunky and feels rushed. I am a little disappointed, but I’m telling myself to be patient. After all, the appeal of Android is in its potential as a powerful open-source computing platform where all kinds of apps can be written and smoothly run.

So apparently Youtube is now the #2 ranked internet search engine below Google, ahead of Yahoo.

This is a significant milestone for a couple of reasons. One of them is that Google, which of course owns Youtube, is in control of the top two search engines on the net.

A more interesting one to me though, is just the milestone of how far internet video has come. Remember the days when cutting edge internet video meant Real Player and streaming Windows Media Video? Remember how Real Player tried to install like 92893284923 different things on your computer, with hidden check boxes that were checked in by default? Remember how Windows Media Video players would stutter and buffer every 5 seconds, not matter how much time you spent pausing the video to let it buffer ahead of playback? Ahhh, memories.

Now Youtube has become such a ubiquitous part of our digital culture that it’s practically a verb (which happened first, incidentally, with Google… I think I even heard my grandma say “So I googled it” yesterday). With television programming being offered online with services like Joost, Hulu, Miro and increasingly, the television networks themselves, and Netflix starting to offer streaming movies online, it’s exciting to think of how big internet video is going to be in just a couple of years.

One phenomenon that’s resulted from the boom of internet video that I could do without, though? The Rickroll. :\

I’ve been using the Google Chrome browser for the past month or so. Verdict? It’s got its good points, things I definitely think other browsers would be wise to adopt in the future. But overall, it’s just too raw a product right now to switch to on a more permanent basis, especially when Firefox beckons me with my comfortable host of AddOns. That being said, there were some features of Chrome that I really liked and miss.

• The Omnibar. This was great. Figures Google, the kings of search, would make searching easier than ever. The single URL / search bar was more than meets the eye; once you search on a page, say Youtube.com or Amazon.com, you can then search that site directly from the Omnibar without having to navigate to that page or click a button. All you have to do is start typing the site, hit tab and enter your search query once Chrome recognizes it. Very slick feature.
• The Start Page. Chrome displayed a thumbnail grid of the pages you visited most, as well as recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs, and all relevant search bars. There are Firefox addons that emulate this, but none of them do it as elegantly as Chrome did.
• Blazing speed! This is something no addon is going to give you. Chrome was FAST! There was one major annoyance though; Chrome had trouble with Flash, particularly videos. Youtube videos would stutter or freeze up the browser.

In the end, I think browser competition can only be a good thing for the end user. Hopefully this leads to increased creativity in upcoming browser updates across all major browser platforms.