Since Google first launched Chrome for Windows in beta they have worked hard to bring out versions for Mac and Linux.  Additionally, they’ve worked diligently on making the safer, faster and easier for all three platforms.  Over the short two years, there has been a range of features released to improve the interface such as customizable tab pages, themes, password manager, updated privacy controls, auto translation and synchronized settings like bookmarks, and preferences – a library of 6,000+ extensions to enhance a user’s experience.

With the two year anniversary comes a new version of Chrome which Google touts as being even faster, 3x faster than two years ago, and more streamlined in its appearance.  Google has worked on stripping the interface down to make it more minimalist and easier to use.  If you have held back from trying Chrome these past two years, Google is hoping the new, improved version will be sufficient to entice you into giving it a go and hopefully give the likes of Firefox and IE a run for their money!

SocialDeck is Google’s fifth acquisition for the month of August and the company, who has employees based in Toronto and San Francisco, is just one of many companies which Google has recently acquired that is based around social networking.  Angstro, who produces a product named Noteworthy News, has recently been acquired by Google along with Slide a social network games developer; Jambool who develops online payment platforms for the purchase of virtual goods and Like.com which is a visual shopping engine.

If Google is getting ready to hit the social networking scene it would not be the first time they have attempted to do so.  Recently they closed down their Google Wave service which gave users an interface where they could control emails, instant messaging and social network pages.  Wave failed to perform as expected and other social platforms such as Google Buzz have also been underwhelming in terms of performance.

The meteoric rise of Facebook has surely got Google sitting up and taking notice.  Facebook now has over 500 million users worldwide, a figure which is set to keep on growing.  But if Google is going to tempt us away from our favorite social network sites then it will need to add additional features – based on the recent acquisition, maybe online gaming?

By now, Google has probably noticed the rising popularity of social games such as Farmville, MediaWars, etc.  Farmville allows users to build virtual communities with friends and others and add to their game playing experience by purchasing virtual goods with real money.  The incentive for sites like Facebook is that the game’s developers will share around 30% of the profits from virtual purchases with the host site.  With around 61 million users for Farmville alone this makes for a very nice revenue stream.

So with all of Google’s recent purchases it would appear they are busy developing their own social gaming platforms, something which will be absolutely necessary if they are to find success in the social networking world!  Only time will tell – it will sure make for an interesting and competitive market as two giants collide.

Over the coming days, all Gmail users with individual accounts will be able to access it.  If you use Gmail as part of Google Apps availability to Priority Inbox may depend on whether your domain administrator has allowed you access to ‘pre-release’ features.

Priority Inbox has been developed by Google in response to Google’s conviction that email overload is a problem that is increasing and which is forcing people in to spending far too much time and energy in organizing their inboxes for both personal and work related emails.  It will work as an optional view of inbox messages and users can toggle between other views such as listing messages by timestamp or in alphabetical order according to senders’ names or subjects.

When you activate Priority Inbox, the inbox is divided in to three sections, important and unread emails will appear at the top; flagged messages will appear in the middle and everything else will be in the last section.  Google’s director of product management in its enterprise unit, Matthew Glotzbach, has promoted this new feature as a kind of inverted spam filter allowing emails to be prioritized instead of blocked or set aside as unsolicited and which allows users to instantly see the most important messages first.

Glotzbach said, “If you’re in meetings and you come back to your email and you have five minutes between appointments and you have 50 emails, which five messages do you spend your time on in that window of time? Priority Inbox aims to automate that and simplify that decision”.

Google’s own in house tests showed that users of Priority Inbox were typically spending around 6% less time managing their email or for an employee who would usually spend 13 hours per week on email, an entire working week per year could be saved.

For more information, check out Google Priority Inbox.

The Google Voice service which launched last year in Beta, has since undergone a metamorphosis and has emerged as a brilliant solution to online phone and voicemail management.  The SMS service works better and there is a Chrome extension which makes it easier to manage.  An account is still free if you have a Google log-in and you have a choice of keeping your existing number and upgrading it with voicemail.  If that doesn’t suit then you can set a new main number which will ring your cell, home and office phones, as well as your desktop VoIP. Gmail integration also gives users the ability to turn voicemail into emails.  International calls are cheap and future additions include number portability and no set-up web calling.

As a communications solution, especially where small businesses are concerned, it is simply brilliant and we have been using it for sometime now along with over 1 million others – a figure you can now expect to balloon thanks to this latest release.  Google themselves are delighted with the results particularly after the now infamous rejection by Apple of its Google Voice app (an episode that led Google to design their own mobile based web app).

Google have described the service as ‘the pinnacle of modern human communication’ and given all that it has to offer – I think they may be right!

• 2000 – Google announced it had developed “MentalPlex”, cutting edge software which could read a users mind!  Google would therefore be able to tell instantly what we were looking for and take us straight to it.
• 2002 – Google decided they would share with us the technology behind its PageRank system, otherwise known as PigeonRank.  Apparently PigeonRank is a cost effective and efficient means of ranking pages and we were assured that no animals are harmed during the process.
• 2004 – Google claimed to have created a new operating system called Luna/X (a pun to Linux, Windows XP and Max OS X) which they said was fully operational at their state of the art research center, located on the moon.  They were accepting applications.
• 2005 – Google Gulp was the drink of choice for all would be Googlers.  This beverage claimed to optimize our Google user experience by helping to increase our intelligence.  This brain power boost would come from real-time analysis of our DNA and some careful adjustment to the neurotransmitters in our brain.  Mmm, sure I saw something similar in an episode of Start Trek once!

What’s in store for us next year?  Regardless, laugh and joke about it but don’t be fooled!

Well, not as far as the Mayor of Topeka, Kansas.  Recently, Google announced that it will build incredibly fast fiber optic Internet networks in certain areas of the country.  To capture Google’s attention, the Mayor elected (with no argument from the city council) to temporarily rename Topeka, Kansas to Google, Kansas.  Call me crazy but this it outright ridiculous.  Topeka, Kansas is a large American city.  It’s a state capital.  To change the name to capture Google’s love and attention in hopes to be selected for Google’s broadband effort is outrageous.

In today’s world, no love is stronger than the love from Google, Inc.  My fiance may dislike that bold statement but being in the web industry, we’re constantly seeking love from Google to get our client’s websites ranked higher in nature search.  That being said, you should never change who you are for someone’s love.  It’s not worth it; be the person (or city) that you are and be proud of it.  You’re either liked for who you are and what you bring to the table, or you’re not.  If not, it’s just not meant to be — continue looking for that better suited friend, partner, employer, etc.

For the full story, Google (verb) [Topeka Google (noun)].