There have been rumors that Google was working on a phone for years. Even after Android was released, some speculated that a Google phone was still in the works. Recently the rumors have gone wild.

Google started handing some of their employees a new phone to test. A recent FCC approval is adding fuel to the fire. Is Google going to enter the Android market with their own phone? Or are they just testing hardware from another vendor? Some Google employees were treated to a G1, and developers were given unlocked myTouch 3G's at last year's I/O conference, so handing employees phones isn't necessarily an indication they're making one.

Google is remaining officially quiet, refusing to even comment on their own blog post, but a few loose-lipped employees are confirming the rumors. An actual Google phone, rumored to be called Nexus One, could be on the market as early as next month.

I hope that's accurate timing, because early January means a likely CES release. I'll be in Las Vegas next month checking out the latest Android phones. With luck, I'll see a Nexus One.

Google Suggest attempts to auto-complete search queries before you've finished typing them. Sometimes with hilarious results. Now the suggested results are even better. In addition to suggesting search terms, Google Suggest will show quick answers to common questions.

Type "weather" and start to type the name of a city, and Google will show you a quick forecast before you've even completed the name. Type "yhoo stock" for a quick quote on Yahoo! shares. Type in a calculation problem to see the results instantly.

Google Suggest now incorporates a lot of Google's hidden search tricks without having to wait for search results. Now you can impress your friends with even faster answers.

Google released betas for Chrome for Linux and Macs. There might not be nearly as many Linux users as there are Mac and Windows users, but Linux is the foundation for the new Chrome OS.

They also announced extensions for Chrome with a gallery of over 300 of them already available. Extensions only work for the Linux and Windows versions of Chrome.

I've been playing with early developer releases of Chrome for Mac for a while, and it doesn't seem much difference. The initial release does not include extensions, bookmark sync, bookmark manager, or cookie manager. You can still use themes.

However, it's still faster than Firefox and far less likely to lock up my system when using tabbed browsing. If you want to use Google Web services like Google Docs and Google Wave, Chrome for Mac is a fantastic way to do it, but boo on having to wait for extensions.

Real-time search results mean you can see breaking news the instant it's indexed. This is something all the major search engines have been exploring, and one of the reasons both Microsoft and Google struck a recent deal with Twitter to include tweets in search result. Google launched real-time results today.

Google has expanded their agreement to include Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca. That gives them a very wide array of microblog and status update streams, but is it useful?

At the recent Web 2.0 Expo, Vik Singh, creator of Yahoo! TweetNews, indicated that very few searches would be enhanced by real-time results. Even worse, most microblog posts do not supply true breaking information. Instead, the posts point to content elsewhere on the Web and echo what someone else has already posted.

You don't need to know someone's status update when you're looking for directions on how to knit, and when you're looking for a news story, you need trusted sources and not Internet rumors.

I spoke to Google Fellow, Amit Singhal about Google's new announcement, and he stressed that relevance was the key factor and the reason they were bringing real-time results to Google. He said that he was initially skeptical about the usefulness of this feature, too. He couldn't disclose numbers, but he said it was "an order of magnitude" larger than what he expected.

Google is rolling this feature out, so you may not see real-time results in regular searches for a bit. However, you can still see real-time search in action. Go to Google Trends and then Hot Topics. Click on a Hot Topic, and you'll see real-time results. They appear in about the middle of the search results page and keep scrolling as new results come in.

Some of these results are extremely relevant, but the Twitter results do seem to be mainly repeats and links to other content. Thankfully, even very gossipy topics like "Tiger Woods women" had more real-time news results than Twitter posts.

It's a lot easier to remember www.about.com than it is 207.241.148.80, but Web browsers use these IP numbers to find Web pages. Domain Name Servers, DNS, are used to perform the Internet magic of translating these domain names to IP addresses behind the scenes.

Google released a new Public DNS to try and speed things up. The faster that domain name is resolved, the faster you can get to your Web pages. Many pages have multiple streams of content, and even if it's just ads, waiting for those areas of your Web pages to download can bog down your system.

I've configured several of my computers to use the new public DNS with Google's instructions, and it did noticeably speed up my browsing time. In some cases, websites that had always been slow for me were suddenly zipping along. I could not get it to work on a computer I use on a network with a firewall, but that's not surprising.

• Google's Instructions for Switching to Google Public DNS (Requires being comfortable changing your computer system settings.)

When you search for Web pages, you can have Google translate them for you. That's handy, but wouldn't it be even handier if you didn't have to translate each search in order to determine if the website is worth visiting? Now you can have Google translate your search results. This makes it even faster to find the right website in Google's 51 supported languages.

When you search for something and find a lot of foreign language results, go to the Show options button above the search results. Select the Translated search option at the bottom of the list. Your results will automatically be translated into your preferred language, and when you click on the link, the entire website is translated for you. If you want to change languages, you can do so in the options box at the top of the results page.

I tested this out with a search for German rock band Toten Hosen, and it worked fairly well. Was it perfect? No. Machine translation can't always account for spelling errors or slang. For instance, one search preview said, "...xDDieses video is and will remain Werbefrei, so it tries not at first."

Glitches aside, this is a great feature for anyone who wants to search international websites.

Google is well known for their minimalist approach to their search engine homepage. Rather than distract with bells and whistles (or enhance with extra features, depending on who you ask,) they've limited the number of characters visible and made the search text box and logo the center of focus. That approach is popular with users who come to a search engine to search and don't want to wait for widgets and fancy background pictures to download.

Over the years, they've also added a lot of products and services, so they've included links on the top of the screen or featured them just below the search box. Today they're scaling back with an even more minimalist approach. The new homepage will show only the logo, search box, and search buttons (including I'm Feeling Lucky.) The other elements will fade in with mouse movement but avoid "distracting" you from search.

I'm all for clean and simple, but this seems a bit much. Are users really overwhelmed with options when they visit the Google homepage? Gee, I want to search the Web, but I'm not sure what I should do from here. I wish the homepage wasn't so distracting.

What do you think? Is the new minimalist design elegant and awesome or silly?

Every year Google compiles a list of search trends, the Google Zeitgeist. It's an interesting barometer of cultural trends. While the actual top Google searches don't generally change that much (and some of them are naughty,) the searches that rise in popularity each year give insight into the spirit of the times.

Globally, it looks like Michael Jackson's death, Twitter, Facebook, and the Twilight series were all trending topics. In the US, three high profile celebrity deaths sparked searches along with the new TV show Glee, which can be watched on Hulu.

The Google Zeitgeist for 2009 is:

The first Monday after Thanksgiving has been dubbed Cyber Monday, mainly by marketers. The idea is that after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Christmas shoppers return to work and take advantage of high-speed Internet connections at the office to find some online shopping deals.

Although there are some fantastic deals, there are also some "bargains" that aren't any better than what you'd find elsewhere. I've been doing a lot of comparison shopping this year, and I've seen quite a few advertised specials that were either cheaper in a retail store or about the same price at several different sites.

How do you find the real bargains?

If you're shopping online,  check Google's Product Search to make sure there isn't a better deal. If you're shopping in retail stores and have an Android or iPhone, download the free ShopSavvy app. It will let you scan in barcodes and compare prices both locally and online.

You can also use Google Product Search from your Android phone with barcode scanning in the US and UK.  Both  ShopSavvy and Google Product Search let you see user reviews, so you don't get stuck with a lemon.

• Gallery of Android Phones

Update:

Google has also introduced Google Checkout deals for participating merchants.

Just a couple of days after posting that Google is a year away from releasing an easy to install version of the Chrome OS, Dell ends up doing just that. Chrome is still not ready for prime time. However, if you've got a Dell Mini 10v you don't mind potentially wrecking with an experimental OS, you can follow their instructions and download the image to an 8GB USB drive for installation.

It's still not stable, and Dell isn't going to support it if you crash, but at least the file comes from a trusted source.

• What Is Chrome OS?