This week in etilities, Google continues to make headlines, this time with Chrome OS, and Pandora is given a chance to prosper.

Pandora heaves a sigh of relief

We wrote almost a year ago about Pandora being in a tough situation with regards to the outrageously high royalties it has to pay to broadcast music over the web, especially compared to traditional radio. It was bad enough that it was basically impossible for the internet radio provider to turn a profit. We can only imagine their relief this week as an agreement on the issue was finally reached. In the words of Pandora’s founder Tim Westergren: “the royalty crisis is over! Webcasters, artists, and record labels have reached a resolution to the calamitous Internet radio royalty ruling of 2007. Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates.”

It didn’t take long for investors to pounce on the occasion. Pandora has already secured $35 million in new funding since the announcement, and it is expected to become profitable very soon.

Google announces Chrome OS

It was hard to miss Google’s announcement of Chrome OS this week, and most of the tech media has talked of little else since. The important takeaway here is that the age of the browser-as-OS will soon be upon us. Very soon. The very fact that Google is naming the OS after its browser coupled with its target market (netbooks) means that you can expect an OS built around the browser, for the browser and with little else in it.

There have been other recent developments in the industry that have shown that we’re about to turn a corner and make the browser the only truly relevant “software product” (aka not in the cloud): Mozilla is adding multiprocess support to Firefox, and Silverlight is working on utilizing your GPU (graphics card) for better HD streaming. This is a clear trend of browsers (and their extensions) becoming more and more like operating systems and the line between the two slowly fading to the point where it will soon no longer exist.

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