When technologists of the future look back in time, they'll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.
Google's Three Biggest Launches of 2009
Two of the three most significant Google releases of 2009 are not yet available to the public in a final release build, but all three are open source. In no particular order:
Chromium OS: In July, Google got Microsoft and Apple shaking in their boots when they announced they were building an operating system. The source code for Chrome OS (in its development phase it's called Chromium OS) became available in November; early adopters can run virtual machine images and bootable USB drive versions of the OS.
Google Wave: In May, Google demonstrated their new, real-time collaboration webapp, Google Wave, to a crowd of incredulous developers who couldn't stop applauding. In September, they invited 100,000 users to try the Wave Preview. By now, over one million users have joined the Wave Preview. We wrote a book about Wave; and you can give and get Wave invitations on our dedicated forum page.
Android 2.0/Droid: While Android-based handsets were already available when the year started, the Motorola Droid debuted in November running Android 2.0 (with turn-by-turn GPS capabilities) and took on the iPhone in its "Droid Does" ad campaign. Google also released a flurry of Android-only applications and updates to existing ones in 2009 to boost their mobile platform, including the Google Voice app (which Apple rejected on the iPhone), the amazing Google Goggles app, Google Maps enhancements, and Google Listen.
Google's Most Updated Apps of 2009
While a few Google products did get shut down, "sunsetted," or just didn't change much, several marquee apps grew up a whole lot this year with serious feature additions and upgrades.
Search Engine Upgrades: Remember when Google was just a search engine? Googlers do, because they're still busy bees improving search results and rolling out new ways to get to them. This year saw the rollout of Google web search's Caffeine update, as well as music, social, and real-time search, along with several new Google Image search options, and updates to the Google Suggest drop-down.
Gmail: Thanks to Gmail Labs, our favorite web-based email client got a slew of new features for power users, from automatic translations to offline attachments to time zone notifiers to exportable mail filters. If you haven't recently, cruise through your Gmail account's Labs area to pick and choose from over 60 experimental features. Gmail's mobile web application for the iPhone and on Android also saw an overhaul and vast improvement this year.
Chrome web browser: Google's own browser, Chrome, saw a whole lot of movement in 2009, especially late in the year with the release of bookmark sync, official beta builds for Mac and Linux (finally!), and Chrome extensions.
Google News also saw a couple of interesting experiments like Fast Flip and the News Timeline.
Google's Mission to Speed Up the Web
If there's any one thing Google did this year, it was launch a concerted effort on all fronts to make the web faster. From developer tools (like Speed Tracer and the Google Web Toolkit) to consumer products (like Chrome and Google Public DNS), it's kind of astounding the sheer amount of stuff Google put out there this year under the speed umbrella. They're even going so far as attempt to reinvent the two pillar protocols of email and the web with Wave and SPDY (a faster replacement for HTTP).
And the rest....
2009 was also the year of a few legal skirmishes (like the Google Books settlement, the Cyanogen C&D, the Google Voice/FCC dust-up), a few acquisitions (like reCAPTCHA, Gizmo5, and AppJet), and data control initiatives (the Google Dashboard and the Data Liberation Front).
You could say it was a pretty busy year at the Googleplex.
Google's 2009 Product Release Calendar
Take a chronological ride through the last four seasons at Google in this list of 2009 product releases and updates, listed month by month.
January
February
March
April
Updated mobile Gmail and Google Calendar webapps for iPhone and Android launch
GV Mobile makes Google Voice the default for your iPhone (later, Apple pulled this app from the iTunes Store for reasons that are still unclear)
May
June
Google Apps Sync syncs Microsoft Outlook with Gmail, Google Contacts, and Calendars (updates with push Gmail in September)
July
Google announces Chromium OS (but doesn't release any code, doctored screenshots and fan-made versions start popping up)
Apple rejects all Google Voice applications from the iTunes Store
Gmail Tasks graduates from Google Labs (where it first appeared in December of 2008)
August
September
October
Google offers voicemail storage and transcriptions for your existing phone number (part of Google Voice)
Google Voice gives existing users invitations to send to their friends
November
Chrome OS announced, Chromium build demo'ed and source code released (here's how you can try out a Chromium build yourself)
December
Chrome browser hits Mac/Linux with extensions enabled (Chrome for Windows left beta in December of 2008)
Google Favorite Places puts a barcode on restaurants and shops you can scan with your mobile phone
Now you tell us:
What was the best Google launch of the year? The biggest flop? The product that made the biggest difference in your daily life? Let us know in the comments.
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, looks forward to what the GOOG will come up with in 2010. Find her at Smarterware and on Twitter.