We gotta hand it to Google: if its goal was to own the technology news cycle for 48 hours, mission accomplished. The Mountain View-based company spent the first two days this week laying out pretty much every big announcement it possibly could: a new flagship phone coming next week (the Nexus S), a new Android build (2.3 Gingerbread), a preview of the next Android build (Honeycomb) on a never-before-seen Motorola tablet, the debut of its cloud-based laptop platform (Chrome OS) with hardware, and a giant plunge into the growing e-book market -- and that isn't everything. We've done our best to condense all the days' highlights into something easier to digest, so read on for a recap on all things Google!
Google's big week: Nexus S, Honeycomb tablets, Chrome OS laptops, and eBooks to boot
Sponsored Links

Nexus S and Android 2.3 Gingerbread
Gallery: Google Nexus S hands-on | 53 Photos
The biggest draw of the Nexus S, though, would have to be Android 2.3 Gingerbread (a perfect codename for the season). The latest update improves upon 2.2 Froyo with some subtle UI enhancements, including a keyboard that now supports multitouch and finger-sized markers for highlighting text / better copy-and-paste. There's also tightly-integrated VoIP support, video calling support via a front camera, gyroscope support, NFC integration, and a built-in task manager (finally). Most notably, the new build is being called out as significantly better for game development, tying in nicely with all these Sony Ericsson rumors we've been hearing as of late. Nexus One users, who seem prone to always receiving Android updates before most, should receive Gingerbread soon, and come CES / Mobile World Congress, we'd be surprised if we didn't find dozens of devices running the OS.
Gallery: Android 2.3 Gingerbread in pictures | 19 Photos
The Nexus S is officially rolling out December 16th to Best Buy stores in the US (and December 20th at Best Buy and Carphone Warehouse retailers in the UK), subsidized at $199 with a two-year T-Mobile contract or $529 unlocked.
Google eBooks
Honeycomb and the mystery Motorola tablet
But then there was the hardware. Rubin had a Nexus S on hand, but by then our focus was on his second surprise: a prototype Motorola tablet running the next version of Android, codenamed Honeycomb (Stingray, is that you?). The button-less device has video chat, an NVIDIA processor, a "dual core 3D processor," and a more desktop-like UI that better caters to the tablet environment than current Android, including a bottom dock of icons (Gmail, for example, looked a lot more like its iPad counterpart). Rubin used the tablet to show off the latest Google Maps for Mobile update, which has dynamically-rendered vector drawings of cityscapes now, two-finger tilting and rotating, gyroscope support, and caching for offline view of your most-visited areas. You can check out the tablet and Maps in the video above.
Honeycomb won't just be for tablets: Rubin said it'll be coming to phones, too. He didn't much else to say on the build -- after all, Gingerbread isn't even out yet -- but we should expect to see it "sometime next year."
Chrome OS and Cr-48
Then came the Chrome OS laptops. It just takes four steps and less than a minute to set up a brand-new Chrome OS machine -- it pulls all your Chrome themes and settings from the cloud, so it's ready to go almost right away, and changes can propagate in less than a second in some cases. The reference machine demoed was able to come back up from sleep almost instantly -- Google says the limiting factor is actually how fast the user can move their hand. (It wasn't that fast in the demo, but it was still really fast.) The OS also supports multiple accounts with a guest account that runs in Incognito mode, and all user data is encrypted by default. The OS itself is loaded on read-only memory that can't be altered without physical access -- a tech which enables verified booting. (A "jailbreak mode" switch on the developer units lets you install whatever you want, but we'll see what the final machines support.) What's more, the OS will be automatically updated every few weeks -- the goal is for it to get faster over time, not slower.
There's also offline capability -- Google Docs was demoed running offline, with changes synced when the machine reconnects. It seems like that's an app-specific feature though -- apps on the Chrome Web Store have to be built for HTML5 offline to work, obviously. Google also demoed Google Cloud Print, which allows you to print on your home printer from anywhere. Chrome OS devices will also be able to use new Verizon 3G plans for offline access -- you'll get 100MB of free data per month for two years, and then plans start at $9.99 for a day of "unlimited access" with no contracts required. (There will eventually be international options, but those weren't detailed.)
Overall, Chrome OS is very much a modern riff on the "thin client" idea from the 90s -- an idea that Eric Schmidt himself pioneered while at Sun. Indeed, Schmidt took the stage at the event to explicitly draw the connection, saying that "our instincts were right 20 years ago, but we didn't have the tools or technology." That's a pretty wild statement -- and now Google has to deliver.
Nilay Patel and Paul Miller contributed to this report
Verizon owns Engadget's parent company, Verizon Media. Rest assured, Verizon has no control over our coverage. Engadget remains editorially independent.