Is there anything that Google didn't announce at the keynote of its Google I/O developers conference Wednesday morning? 

Google just unleashed a fury of new features for all of its properties today at the Google I/O keynote. We saw new developer features for Android, a variety of tools  and functions for the Chrome browser and OS, a boatload of pictures and communication features for Google+ (along with a redesign), the expansion of Google’s Knowledge Graph, new music, new maps for mobile and more. It is enough to make your head spin just thinking about how much stuff Google is doing these days.

But there were things we thought we might see from the I/O keynote that did not show up.

A New Version Of Android

We were almost certain that Google would at least provide a small new update to Android. Whether it was Android 4.3 Jelly Bean or Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie (or any mix thereof), how could Google go through an entire I/O and not update its most important platform? 

Android has seen 900 million activations. Google Play Android apps have been downloaded 48 billion times. Android has become a mature, stable platform. Google does not really need to push out new Android updates at a breakneck pace the way it has done in the past. Today’s Android news seemed more about helping the developer ecosystem and community catch up with the platform, to make their lives easier and make them more money. 

Hardly Any New Hardware

Google announced a new version of the Chrome Pixel for Chrome OS and a “Nexus” version of the Samsung Galaxy S4. 

We were not really expecting much in terms of hardware from I/O this year, but compared to 2012, the new gadgets were really sparse. Google did not announce a new Nexus device (because there was no new version of Android). That means no new smartphone or tablet, no updates to Google Glass, no set top box for your television and no smartwatch. 

No Major Upgrade to Chrome OS

Chrome was a major topic during the I/O keynote. Google featured the mobile Web, the Chrome Pixel and demoed HTML5 and responsive design features.

Yet Google did not do anything groundbreaking with Chrome OS. Google’s desktop operating system never really seems to take major jumps - instead seeing a constant stream of new updates and features. Chrome may not seem like it is evolving much on a day-to-day or month-to-month basis, but look back a year and you will notice that it is significantly different today than it was at last year’s I/O. 

Google Glass Makes No News

Google co-founder Sergey Brin did not make an appearance at all during the I/O keynote. Hence, neither did his pet project, Google Glass. After all the announcements on Android, Chrome, Search, Maps, Google+ and everything, Google's most-hyped new product these days got no mention.

Larry Page addressed a question from Robert Scoble on Glass at the end of the keynote, but that was about it. It seems that Glass is not a substantial part of Google's future. It is cool, fun, geeky, but kind of a side show.

Note, lead image by Nick Statt was altered to create an empty podium.

Forget what you think you heard and whatever conjecture the Internet has been throwing around. Google’s Android and Chrome operating systems are not going to merge into one. 

According to a report from Reuters, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said that the two operating systems may overlap features but will remain separate and distinct. Speculation arose earlier this month that Android and Chrome would merge when Google replaced Andy Rubin, the longtime head of its Android division, with Sundar Pichai, the manager of Chrome OS. 

Andy Rubin Prohibitive Technical Challenges

From a theoretical perspective, the move to merge Google’s mobile operating system and its desktop operating system has long made sense. Each OS could benefit from properties of the other and Google could streamline its device lineup by combining the two. From a business and technical perspective, folding Chrome into Android was never realistic. 

Android uses the Linux kernel but is very Java-based, as the public learned in a big way last year when Oracle sued Google over the use of Java in Android. Chrome is mostly Linux based. While it is possible to merge the two kernels, the work behind a combination would have been daunting to the point of being prohibitive for Google to even bother. 

Why would Google want to merge the two anyway? Android is the world’s most-used mobile operating system. It already has Chrome functionality as the default browser in most new devices such as the ability to sign in to your Google account, share search history and bookmarks. Chrome OS is a browser-based operating system that is tangential to the features that are offered in Android. 

Room For Both To Grow

Google can continue to focus its efforts in Chrome OS towards laptops and notebooks, possibly tablets. Chrome OS competes in the realm of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Despite declining PC sales, the market is still big enough to warrant Google’s attention with a dedicated operating system and Chrome is what Google has to bring to the fight. 

The fact of the matter is that Android does not need Chrome OS to grow and succeed in the mobile market. Chrome OS has the potential to grow into a significant business for Google, regardless of Android. The two can work well in cohort while still maintaining individual identities.

Google’s game for both Android and Chrome OS is to get more people on the Web, using Google services such as search, Gmail and Maps. There is room for more than one operating system to fulfill that goal.

Top image: Chrome plated Android statue at Google campus from Paul Wilcox.

Windows 8 is not really my cup of tea. Mac OS X Mountain Lion is not what I hoped it would be. Google's Chrome operating system is not powerful enough for my purposes. What is a power user to do?

Use multiple operating systems at once, that's what! And with advances in desktop virtualization, that's easier than ever to accomplish.

With today's powerful multi-core processors and inexpensive RAM, it is easy to take advantage of a trend that has already swept the Fortune 100. It just needs a little tweaking for the home environment. Let me show you how it works for me.

What Is Virtualization?

First, a quick bit of background. Virtualization is all about separating the software from the hardware, creating virtual machines that act like real machines inside another operating system. Server virtualization is all the rage because it allows companies to create multiple "virtual" servers on a limited number of physical servers, boosting efficiency, adding flexibility and lowering costs.

Desktop virtualization, meanwhile, creates one or more virtual environments on a single piece of hardware. And it's hardly new. In the early '90s we used Soft PC to run Windows on Macintosh computers.

Early virtual environments were slow - and the extra memory they required was expensive. Today, a fussy operating system user like me can build a complex system at home with lots of memory for not a lot of money. And that lets me do some very interesting things.

Obviously it would be simpler to stick with one operating system. But I have developed a fondness for certain programs over the years and some of them are platform specific. I want to use all of them, and advances in virtualization let me have my cake and eat it too.

What Does My Home Virtual Environment Look Like?

I have three screens on my desk, driven by two powerful but inexpensive computers. One is a Lenovo tower PC driven by an Intel Core i5 chip with 8GB of RAM. The other is a Mac Mini with 16GB of RAM.

Total spending - including a new LCD monitor to join the two I had- was less than $1,500. That includes a very reasonable $50 for VMware Fusion, virtualization software. I also downloaded the free non-commercial version of TeamViewer to let me remotely control a desktop computer from another computer.

While all of this may sound pretty complicated, it's actually a fairly simple way to create just the environment that I want.

I love the Linux desktop environment. And AbiWord offers a good balance between advanced word-processing features and simplicity. 

But I don't want to live entirely in Linux. I don't to give up Pixelmator on the Macintosh for my graphics work or Rapidweaver for my websites. And I prefer Microsoft Excel on Windows for my spreadsheets. I also like Postbox on Windows for my mail and Adobe's Lightroom for my photos. I actually run Chrome and Firefox browsers in all three operating systems as needed.

The 16GB of memory in the Mac lets me easily run a virtual Linux environment using Fusion. Teamviewer lets me control my Lenovo PC from the Mac - and run the latest version of Excel and Postbox in a PC Window.

If I want to move files from one environment to the other, I use Dropbox. It is the only popular cloud storage tool easily usable on Linux by someone like me.

With my system it is easy to use whatever tool I prefer - no matter which environment it lives in - with the power of two modern microprocessors and plenty of storage. I can ignore the parts of Windows 8 that bug me while still getting access to Windows programs. I don't have to give up my specialized Mac programs like iMovie, but I can avoid the iOSified version of iPhoto for my daily photography work.

Getting It All To Work

Not surprisingly, there were some hiccups putting this all together. I never got Microsoft's Remote Desktop Client to work with Mac OS X Lion, but Teamviewer worked on the first try. Selecting the right version of Linux required a few tries, but with VMware's installation program you can install directly from a downloaded ISO image.

One of the neat things about virtualization is that my Linux environment is just a file on the Mac. Dedicating hardware to Linux is still not as easy as using a virtual Linux machine that takes advantage of all the hardware drivers that come with the Mac environment.

Cost-Effective - And A Built-In Backup System

I could have also installed a virtual PC environment on my Mac, but when you look at the $99 cost of a Windows 8 license, buying a whole PC got me another CPU, 8GB more RAM, a 1TB hard drive, keyboard, mouse and DVD burner for just $400 more.

I also could have bought a powerful Mac Pro system to run everything. But the economics of that approach make no sense. A Mac Pro with less RAM and about the same amount of storage costs almost $3,000. Would it be faster? Hard to say. It would certainly be more elegant and compact, but my virtualized setup works great for me.

Having two systems also lets me one as a backup. If necessary, I could upgrade to the Windows version of the VMware product and move over my Linux environment by just copying a file.

More to the point, I love having every piece of software I could dream of at my finger tips.

Android Authority has snagged an intriguing video that purports to show a sleek, new Chromebook with 2560 x 1700 resolution touchscreen called the Chromebook Pixel. The video claims the machine is "designed by Google, down to the last pixel."

Is this for real?

There's no smoking gun, but I have subtle yet compelling evidence that it is.

New ChromeBook - Next Generation Concept... by androidauthority

Where Did This Video Come From?

The video came from Android Authority, as far as I'm concerned, because it has disappeared from its original sources. Bogdan Petrovan at Android Authority tells it like this: A developer named François Beaufort, who spotted exciting upcoming features in Chrome last week, posted this video on Google+. It disappeared shortly thereafter, but not before Android Authority could snag it.

The description made it sound like the clip came from a company called Slinky.me, which makes some kind of visual guides to things. The company posted on Google+ claiming that its servers were attacked by hackers and apologizing for "the fact that many projects have been shown previously ! ! ! Please re-share ! This is very important" [sic].

Now, that sounds like classic tech blog trolling to me. "Whoops! You've never heard of us, but we accidentally lost control of a sexy new Google product video! We're really sorry!" And then the company gets press. That's a win for some companies, even if it means getting blackballed by Google forever.

But I've been dealing with Google PR for a while. I've covered ChromeOS device launches and had briefings with the team. And there are some clues in here that seem totally legit to me.

Smells Like Google

First of all, we've been seeing evidence of touchscreen Chrome OS for a long time. My instinct was always that this meant a development in the other direction, a Chrome tablet, rather than a touchscreen Chromebook. And I wouldn't rule that out, either. When I interviewed the Chrome OS people in May, VP of engineering Linus Upson said to expect "a number of different form factors." A touchscreen laptop would qualify under that description as well.

But the telltale sign about the Chromebook Pixel to me is in just one line from the narrator in the video. "Your computer actually gets better over time," the disembodied voice says. This was straight out of the Google PR playbook. The Google PR folks intoned it over and over again when I talked to them ahead of the Samsung Chromebook and Chromebox launch.

The translation is that Chrome OS devices get better because they're just a browser in a box, and whenever Google improves Chrome, the machine's whole OS benefits. But it's a subtle point, a geeky point. One Googlers would care about more than anyone else. It's one you'd have to be very familiar with Google's party line not to miss.

So I'll go out on a limb here and say this machine is real. A high-spec Chromebook is definitely what Google needs to prove the worth of the Chrome OS idea, and a touchscreen is icing on the cake.