Is the move by Google to find its way off of your Web browser and into your machine something that we need to be concerned about? I suppose it depends on how important you feel personal privacy is…

A full weekend has passed since Larry Page made the last of what was assumed to be three major speeches from the heads of the three major search engines at the 2006 CES convention in Las Vegas. Page’s lackluster announcements on Google Pack and Google Video followed similar underwhelming performances by Yahoo’s Terry Semel and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Perhaps expectations had been placed too high by the press. Scheduled fresh on the heels of the Christmas-New Year’s slump, commentators and observers wrote highly speculative pieces, mostly about Google. By Friday afternoon however, what might have been, simply was not.

CES is supposed to be about consumer electronics, the sort of things we find in our kitchens, living rooms and offices. The sort of things Google and Yahoo have never made, manufactured or marketed (aside from search-servers). MSN’s parent company Microsoft has a well-earned place on the podium but Google and Yahoo are services, not manufacturers, both relying on software running on hardware created and compiled by other firms. Last week, commentators were speculating Google was going to announce the development of a low-cost personal computer that directly threatened more than a few of Microsoft’s near monopolies. [Read the rest]