It has been a very, very busy time for the folks over at Google lately. The much hyped Google Wave is open to a few lucky individuals who got invitations (read more about it at Wikipedia here) and is set to revolutionize the way we communicate online. Not only that, the Google Wave interface is reported to possibly be rolled out to all Google Apps, read more at Engadget here.

That’s just about it right? Well, no… Google appears to be in the process of stockpiling at the moment. Along with Wave, the next-generation of Google search, aka Caffeine, may be just over the horizon. Designed to integrate more tightly with social networking, and apparently twice as fast and more accurate, Caffeine is set to change the way we search. There is a detailed test of Caffeine at Mashable here. Google also just purchased AdMob, a mobile display advertising company, for $750 million. AdMob is one of the largest mobile advertising platforms in the world, claiming to serve more than 7 billion ads a month! You can read more about it at the official press release here.

Finished? Definitely not! They have also just acquired Gizmo5, which will most likely add the ability to make calls to Google Voice. They even decided to release a new programming language, simply called Go. There was also the announcement of a project called SPDY (SPeeDY), which is set to improve upon the current HTTP standard. Read more about SPDY at the Chromium Blog here. Page load time is set to become a more important part of the search results page (read more at Search Engine Land here), Chrome for Mac is set for a December Beta release and finally Google dropped the prices for their extra paid storage, giving you twice the storage for a quarter of the price!

What are all the pieces of the puzzle adding up to? In my mind, only one thing, the coming release of Google Chrome OS. There is one place in the market where Google is forever losing and though there have been many battles, Microsoft continues to bundle Internet Explorer as the primary (and only) browser with Windows. On my installation of Windows 7, if I open Internet Explorer where does my homepage land? Not on Google, I am rather directed to the MSN portal page with a Bing search box.

Google, earns it revenue through advertising, whilst Microsoft sells software. Every person who doesn’t use Google, is one less prospective customer and one less possible click for Google. The chances of Microsoft (unless legally forced to do so) bundling a competitor’s browser (namely Google Chrome) with Windows is just about zero. The only way for Google to gain ground is to do exactly what it is doing now, undermine the very basis of Microsoft’s domination - Windows. Chrome OS will be open source, hence as open source it will also be free. The lure of this is (especially) in the budget PC and netbook market where the additional price of Windows software adds a sizable chunk onto the price. With Google offering Chrome OS free, and if it is good, they already have one foot very firmly in the door. The integration of Chrome OS with the Google suite of applications and services will mean one thing, more places to display advertisements!

Is this the beginning of a battle of the titans? Will we in a few years time see Google having a large piece of the operating system market, which at the moment is almost completely dominated by Microsoft? Only time will tell, but I get the feeling something is afoot…