The search engine news sphere has been dominated by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) announcing the birth of the Google Chrome Operating System this week. We think this will become a very important launch, mainly because of what the Chrome OS will not be.

It will not be another Windows for running large applications on your own computer. As a matter of fact, the Chrome OS is nothing but a shell surrounding the Chrome web browser. You will use the browser to run your applications, and those applications will mainly be run on computers up in “the Cloud”: on Google’s own servers, Google hope.

We have given our take on Google’s long term plans in our article The long term plans for Google world domination.

Here are some more interesting articles and posts from the world of searching and search engine marketing:

• Google’s New Report Offensive Images Feature

  If you go to Google Images and search on a keyword, and then click on new SafeSearch filter drop down (might only work on a PC), you will see a new way of reporting offensive images. (SE Land July 10 2009)

• Link Consolidation is the new Pagerank Sculpting?

  Link consolidation basically means combining several pages of content in one single page, using anchor links to organise it internally. (SearchCowboys July 10 2009)

• Why I’m Looking Forward to a Google Operating System

  Graywolf: There will always be people who need a powerful OS and computer with substantial hardware, but for most it’s overkill. (July 9 2009)

• Getting Listed In Bing News

  Brett Yount from the Bing Webmaster Center said the way to be included in Bing News is a manual process. (SE Roundtable July 8 2009)

• How to Preview Your Google SERPs Listing

  Here’s one handy tool allowing you to play around to get an idea how your page listing might look within Google SERPs (SE Journal July 8 2009)

• BoomTown’s Favorite Leaked Yahoo Internal Memo Ever: New PR Head Eric Brown Says Hello (and More)!

  Yahoo’s whole marketing organization is undergoing a rejiggering (BoomTown July 7 2009)

• Introducing the Google Chrome OS

  Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. (Google Blog July 7 2009)

• Unveiling Yahoo! Search Pad

  Search Pad helps you track sites and make notes by intelligently detecting user research intent and automatically collecting sites the user visits. (Yahoo Search Blog July 7 2009)

• Why You Should Care About Link Spikes

  Link spikes are of particular concern when you realize that they can, in some cases, serve as a red flag to a major search engine. (SE Land July 7 2009)

• Google code cloud punts on-demand embarrassment

  App Engine was offline for roughly six hours, and for much of that time, even the status page which tells users about downtime was unavailable. (The Register July 6 2009)

• Google Begins Banning Google AdWords Scams

  People have been promoting fake Google payout systems, such as Google Money Kit or Money System, along with dozens of other names, to convince people that Google is giving people a way to earn quick bucks. (SE Roundtable July 6 2009)

• New Blog Search tools: Feeds, Hot Queries and Latest Posts

  Google Blog Search adds RSS and Atom feeds. (Google Blog July 2 2009)

• Google Images Safe Search Switch Changed

  Google image search made toggling the SafeSearch option a tiny bit easier, by including the settings switch menu right on the results page (Blogoscoped July 5 2009)

• Google accounts on Twitter

  Get Google News from Google’s twitter feeds (Google Blog July 11 2009)

• Google News Lets You Search by Author; 25,000 Sources?

  Search Google News for the work of specific journalists. (ResearchBuzz July 10 2009)

• Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome.

  In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. (TechCrunch July 7 2009)

• Chrome: A Shiny Wrap for the Plumbing of the Google

  Beyond Search: The open source angle is a nifty one. Google does the “community” a service and automatically enlists those math club members world wide in a mission to snap a chastity belt on Microsoft’s promiscuous software (July 8 2009)

• Google Drops the Beta

  Google is losing the beta label for Google Apps related tools, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk. (About.com July 8 2009)

• Ixquick Undergoes a Name Change

  Ixquick announced this morning that it has launched a new Web site to give its users something easier to spell than Ixquick: Startpage.com (Researchbuzz July 7 2009)

• Real Time Search Engine, When Breaking News Isn’t Fast Enough

  There’s a new search engine called Collecta that aims to result in real-time search results across the Web. (Researchbuzz July 7 2009)

• SimilarSites.com

  You type in a site that you like and it’ll find well - similar sites to that one. (P Bradley July 5 2009)

• Google Image Search Now Features License Filter

  Google has just launched a new feature of Image Search which is aimed at helping users find images that are free to use based on their usage licenses (SE Journal July 10 2009)

• Google’s Still No Threat To Microsoft

  Google’s like this crazy uncle who is rolling in dough from his first business, and who likes to use his money to keep the rest of the world guessing as to what he’s really up to. (NetworkWorld July 10 2009)

• Bing Powers New Quick Add Feature for Hotmail

  Hotmail allows you to include a variety of goodies to your emails including restaurant reviews, movie times, images, videos, and maps. (SE Watch July 10 2009)

• Bing Keeps Its Foot On The Gas, Adds Tweets To Results

  Bing crawl the tweets of important people and includes them in search results (TechCrunch July 1 2009)

• Bing Leapfrogs Yahoo Search … Again

  Microsoft’s Bing has surpassed Yahoo Search as the second most used search engine in the United States. (TechCrunch July 10 2009)

• Bing Organizes Webmaster Content in “Bing Toolbox”

  The Bing Toolbox is basically a landing page that has links to the most important webmaster tools that Bing manages. (SE Roundtable July 10 2009)

• Seeing the world with improved Google Search results

  Now, when you search for locations using Google Search, you may see pictures from that place alongside a map. (Google Blog July 10 2009)