Most of the users still stick to the regular search, but that’s only because they haven’t discovered the search options yet.

Today, Google extended the availability of these search options for iPhone, WebOS and Android users. These options are currently available to the users in US only and will be extended to a wider audience in the coming months.

The recent update of WebOS 1.2.0 did not offer any new features to its users but did fix a list of bugs and several tweaks for optimized performance.

The tweaks and updates are related to Music, App Catalog, Bluetooth, Calendar, E-mail, Contacts, Media, etc… as you can see almost all aspects of the OS have been touched.

The webOS team is paying close attention to the the feedback received from the community and fixing the bugs quite promptly. Since its launch in June, Palm, has released 5 WebOS update which means a new update at a distance of about 20 days each.

Here is a list of important updates WebOS 1.2.0 offers..

• Music from Amazon’s MP3 can now be purchased over your phone network and you do not need a WiFi connection.
• The much awaited App Catalog is ready and now by entering your credit card information you can purchase apps. Also the Credit Card info would be stored on the Palm profile and not your phone. You can also download and re-install the application you used earlier for free from App Catalog without paying anything. You can share app information via email or text message with one button.
• Contact transfers via Bluetooth has now been increased and it does notify and ask if you would like to transfer  the call to the car kit instead of the call getting transferred automatically which used to happen earlier.
• Several improvements made to the calendar such as changing the view, color, option of tapping the number and dialing it if the calendar note contains the phone number. By tapping snooze on a calendar event notification it no longer appears after the event and time.
• Send and Receive vCards as an attachment to an email or MMS.
• Provides the option to search for messages in any email folder and also lets you act upon images and send them again as attachments. Also gives you the option to copy the image to the Photo apps if JPG, BMP or PNG format. Formatting is maintained when trying to forward a message. Meeting invitation responses are sent correctly and support for paragraph text selection also available and much more..
• If an audio file is paused or interrupted, playback resumes from the point you paused it.
• Downloading files is supported in the browser now. You can also accept self signed certificates through the browser. Backing up and restoring of web browser bookmarks and lot more.

Click here to read more about the update… or if you are new to Palm Pre, Click here to learn about the update process.

This certainly improves the performance and helps users accelerate through the searches on their mobile phones.  Also, the advantage of having your searches sync is that you can sometimes start where you left off on the PC or simply run through the search history.

The suggestions shown on the phone interface are personalized based on your search history. See the image below to know what I mean…

Users should be logged into their Google accounts to be able to take advantage of this feature and understandably logins should be the same on the phone and PC to see the correct information in terms of Search History and Personalized Suggestions!

Such small, yet intelligent features keep Google ahead of its competition and thats what I love about Google!

Google recently announced its roadmap of entering into the OS market for machines ranging from Netbooks to the regular PC’s.

With the growing popularity of not so powerful but extremely mobile netbooks we needed something that was absolutely optimized to run on such machines.

Running vista on these machines is just plain wrong and there can still be something less bulkier than Windows XP that’s currently dominating the netbook
market.

Linux was certainly the first choice of the Netbooks but it certainly cannot match the user-friendly interface of Windows which is why most of the users opt
for a Windows based netbook.

Google is now trying to change that by designing a much simpler and easier interface to accomplish simple and everyday tasks.

While reading the following lines from the announcement reminded me of Palm’s new WebOS which works on the same idea.

Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google is certainly underplaying it by calling its version of OS lightweight which will help users complete simple tasks quickly. In my opinion it will be or will become a full fledge OS that will eventually compete with Windows OS.

If Google does not deliver a fully functional OS which exploit’s the power of netbooks I don’t see how it will take on its competition, Microsoft. Besides if it delivers an OS which only checks e-mails or does the things only a browser is capable of doing then it will actually be wasting the hardware resources available on Netbooks which makes Google Chrome OS less desirable.

Nonetheless it’s a good move on Googles part to identify the fast growing Netbooks as the entry point into the OS market but its success only depends on what it offers.

Google Chrome OS is expected to hit the market in the second half of 2010 and will run on both x86 and ARM chips which is popularly used on Netbooks.

I am sure this announcement has triggered a few high-level meetings at Microsoft to discuss their strategy to counter Google Chrome OS. The moment Microsoft got a little aggressive with Bing, Google put it back on defensive by announcing Chrome OS.

Click here to read more from the announcement.