But Rubin is not leaving Google, said CEO Larry Page in a blog post today. “Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!”

In email sent to Android partners, Rubin pointed to Android’s success as a victory for openness, and said, “As for me, I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google.”

Page explained the shift as part of the maturation of Android, saying Rubin had taken the project from an independent startup to being acquired by Google to now being the operating system for more than 750 million activated devices globally.

But the transition brings back the perennial question of Google’s two operating systems, Android and Chrome OS, which are coming ever closer to one another as Google has started making touchscreen laptops.

At the launch event for the Chromebook Pixel last month, Pichai’s take on that dynamic was: “We’re comfortable at Google with two viewpoints, and we are doing both.”

In addition to being the visionary behind shaking up the international mobile device market, Rubin had built Android as his own fiefdom within Google, with sculptures of the names of its operating systems out front and a fancy Japanese cafeteria inside. It will be interesting to see how it is now absorbed into the company’s broader structure.

Pichai, meanwhile, is a nine-year veteran of Google. In 2011, he turned down an opportunity to lead product at Twitter, which seems to have only accelerated his power within Google and under Page as CEO.

Which of the following scenarios has regulators in Europe issuing hundreds of millions in new fines this week?

1) Google has released a laptop that consists of nothing more than its browser, thereby severely foreclosing opportunities for competition on any number of fronts.

2) Apple, which for years wouldn’t allow iOS apps to compete with its built-in programs, still won’t allow access to its fastest browsing engine, forcing rivals to use slower technology.

3) Microsoft, which used to have a dominant browser and operating system but has been losing share for years, has failed to live up to the terms of a deal over that fading monopoly.

If you guessed No. 3, you might have a job waiting for you at the European Commission.

While everyone else has turned their attention to mobile — an area where Microsoft trails badly — European regulators have remained doggedly focused on making sure consumers have plenty of choice of browsers when they bother to boot up their desktop.

The issue seemed passe when the EU revisited it back in 2009 and seems all the more so four years later.

Windows and Internet Explorer have continued to lose share over those four years on the desktop itself, and the real growth in the Internet is from billions of mobile devices.

To be fair, Microsoft did agree to offer European consumers the option of a ballot to choose which browser they wanted. Even Redmond admits it made a mistake.

“We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it,” Microsoft said in a statement. “We provided the (European) Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake — or anything similar — in the future.”

But, at this point, might regulators want to turn their attention elsewhere?

Consumers certainly have. Even RealNetworks, Opera and the other outfits that initially complained about Windows have, too.

The ThinkPad X131e, which has already been sold to schools as a Windows-based laptop, is now running the Google Chrome OS, and supports Google Apps designed for education.

Lenovo’s announcement is light on specifics. I’m willing to bet some K-12 kids know their processors in this day and age, but for now, Lenovo is simply stating that the 11.6-inch Chromebook has an “Intel processor,” along with an anti-glare LED screen, USB and HDMI ports. It weighs “under four pounds.”

The $429 ThinkPad X131e isn’t being sold directly to consumers, but will be sold at volume pricing to K-12 education institutions. It will be available Feb. 26.

Since the launch of Chromebooks, Google has extolled the benefits of the lightweight, low-cost laptops in classrooms. For Lenovo, which has a long-standing relationship with the Microsoft Windows OS, it’s an interesting move. It’s not a giant leap into the Chromebook market, by any means, but Lenovo is certainly dipping its toe into new territory with the Chromebook OS for the X131e shell.

Yahoo appears to be rolling out the newest version of the redesign of its homepage even more extensively across several major browsers, including Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.

As AllThingsD has previously reported several times, the Silicon Valley Internet giant has been working on a new homepage look, designed to improve its declining consumer usage.

The latest look has been present on all my browsers all day, rather than cycling off to the old version as before. The design is cleaner, with a more touchscreen tablet approach, new icons, and a scrolling news feature. With a more mobile feel, it’s slightly different than previous new versions that Yahoo has been testing over the last few months.

After redoing its Yahoo Mail and Flickr photo-sharing service, sources inside the company said that Yahoo is now close to launching the new homepage. It’s part of an effort called Project Homerun and also a larger effort called Project Zed, which will also include more personalization and a focus on bringing in a range of third-party content.

More on what that means soon …

Until then, here are three different screenshots from tonight from Chrome, Safari and Firefox:

I have a few questions about Chromebooks. Will they ever be able to run iTunes, Microsoft Office, etc.? Does Google docs have the ability to create documents in Microsoft Office formats? If not, what file formats does Google docs use?

A:

Chromebooks aren’t designed to run traditional computer programs like those you listed. Instead, they use the Chrome Web browser to run websites designed to work like apps. I can’t say whether this will change in the future. But I would note that Microsoft has Web-based, stripped-down versions of the main Office programs at office.com. Google docs, now a part of Google Drive, cannot create documents in Microsoft’s formats. Instead, the service uses its own formats. To edit a Microsoft Office document, you have to convert it into a Google format.

Q:

Have you tested the Enterprise version of the Surface tablet? I’m hopeful I will be able to work on spreadsheets on a Windows tablet soon.

A:

If you mean the Surface Pro, which is due next year with an Intel processor and a full version of Windows 8 that can run older Windows programs, I haven’t tested it yet. But there are a number of tablets already on the market that run full Windows 8 instead of the more limited Windows RT. More information is at: http://tinyurl.com/d2j5bay.

However, your question reveals a misunderstanding about the current Surface, called Surface RT. While it can’t run older spreadsheet programs you might wish to install, it comes with the key parts of the forthcoming 2013 version of Microsoft Office built in. That includes Excel. So you can already work on spreadsheets on a Surface.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

In a post today on its policy blog, Yahoo took aim at Microsoft’s controversial “Do Not Track” default in its Internet Explorer 10 browser.

Said Yahoo in a post titled “In Support of Personal Experience”:

“Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.”

Thus, Yahoo “will not recognize IE10’s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.”

Such a move should make Yahoo very popular with advertisers, most of which are publicly and privately decrying the Microsoft effort for their browser having advertising targeting and tracking turned off by default.

In fact, Yahoo’s statement of no-default-respect pretty much tracks on what the Digital Advertising Alliance, which represents thousands of major marketers, said recently, as well as the Association of National Advertisers.

Both those groups and many others are seeking to kill DNT.

According to sources, the impetus for the Yahoo decision was CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec.

Interestingly, Google recently added DNT support to the latest version of its increasingly popular Chrome browser developer build.

And the third major browser, Mozilla’s Firefox, also offers a DNT product as a key feature.

Right now, Mayer is in discussions with the software giant about improving the weak results of its search advertising partnership, too. This should make those talks much more interesting.

In fact, in a longer privacy post today, titled “Privacy and Technology in Balance,” Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith noted:

“Just because the signal is turned on doesn’t mean that a consumer wants no services that involve tracking. It means instead that consumers are empowered to make their own choices, including selecting services that involve tracking from advertisers and ad networks they trust.”

Here’s the whole post, and here is a really good New York Times piece on the controversy, including talks taking place via an international group working on global DNT standards, called the World Wide Web Consortium:

In Support of a Personalized User Experience

Friday, October 26th, 2012

At Yahoo!, we aspire to make the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining. Our users have come to expect a personalized Yahoo! experience tailor-made for their lives — whether they’re checking local weather, sports scores, stock quotes, daily news, or viewing ads on our site. We fundamentally believe that the online experience is better when it is personalized.

That said, we also believe that there should be an easy and transparent way for users to express their privacy preferences to Yahoo!. That’s why we offer our own tools and resources such as Ad Interest Manager, to give users more control over personalized advertising on Yahoo!, and why we participate in industry-wide programs such as AdChoices, which allows users to learn why they’ve been shown an ad.

Yahoo! has been working with our partners in the Internet industry to come up with a standard that allows users to opt out of certain website analytics and ad targeting. In principle, we support “Do Not Track” (DNT). Unfortunately, because discussions have not yet resulted in a final standard for how to implement DNT, the current DNT signal can easily be abused. Recently, Microsoft unilaterally decided to turn on DNT in Internet Explorer 10 by default, rather than at users’ direction. In our view, this degrades the experience for the majority of users and makes it hard to deliver on our value proposition to them. It basically means that the DNT signal from IE10 doesn’t express user intent.

Ultimately, we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service. Therefore, although Yahoo! will continue to offer Ad Interest Manager and other tools, we will not recognize IE10′s default DNT signal on Yahoo! properties at this time.

Yahoo! is committed to working with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to reach a DNT standard that both satisfies user expectations and provides the best Internet experience possible. We will closely evaluate our support for DNT as the industry makes progress in reaching a meaningful, transparent standard to promote choice, reduce signal abuse, and deliver great personalized experiences for our users.

Besides the premature release embarrassment — which Google blamed on its printer, R.R. Donnelly — Google will have to explain its financial results for the quarter, which were worse than expected. Analysts were expecting revenue of $11.86 billion and profit of $10.65 per share, but the company turned in $11.33 billion and $9.03 per share.

Google earnings calls tend to be pretty dry, but analysts have had an extra few hours to think up their questions, so let’s hope they’re extra spicy.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are Google’s charts and graphs with the details.

1:32 pm: And, we’re getting started.

Larry Page will kick off with commentary.

“As you can hear my voice is still hoarse, so I’ll keep my remarks reasonably short. I’m sorry for the scramble today. … We had a strong quarter. I’m really happy with our business.”

We live in a world of abundant computing, Page says. Many of us feel naked without our smartphone.

People switch between their devices all day, he continues, and that disruption is an opportunity. As we switch from one sceren to multiscreens, Google has enormous opportunities to innovate and create ever better monetization, just like in search 15 years ago.

Google’s new runrate for mobile is over $8 billion. That includes revenue from users paying for content and apps, plus ads. “That’s quite a business.”

Page: Users want one consistent and beautiful experience. Screen independence is at the core of our strategy. When you’re using Chrome, switching between devices is painless.

That goes for advertisers, too. Google also wants to help them dynamically adapt campaigns across devices.

Page talks about search getting smarter. “There’s much more we can do to get you the right information at just the right time.”

1:41 pm: Patrick Pichette takes over. Had it not been for international currency fluctuation, composite growth would have been 6 percent higher.

Pichette clarifies that new mobile runrate includes ads and Google Play content as well as consumer spending on Play apps.

Now he’s doing the thing where he reads the numbers enthusiastically.

Continuing the focus on mobile revenue, Pichette notes some ads on mobile already performing better than desktop, but doesn’t go into details.

Peter breaks out that stat for a story here.

1:50 pm: Nikesh Arora with a business update.

Four major trends are driving growth: 1) rise of multi-screen consumer; 2) ability to deliver more precise answers to consumers; 3) Google offers lots of places to advertise, including brand options on YouTube and elsewhere; 4) Google’s apps/enterprise business.

1:59 pm: In response to a question about increased marketing spending, Pichette replies that Google spent a bunch on Nexus 7 marketing because it was so well reviewed.

Page talks about paid product search, says it’s a better experience for everyone.

Page posted his opening remarks on his Google+ page.

Pichette says that margins reflect the first full-quarter effect of Motorola amortization.

Q: Have desktop searches flatlined in the transition to mobile search?

Page answers: You’re asking the wrong question. It’s not about platforms, it’s about dynamically adapting for users in the right place and right time.

Q: What happens with semantic and vertical search?

Page answers: We’d love to include more people in the knowledge graph and will do more work in that area. On vertical search, Google needs to understand searcher’s context, what concepts mean, etc. “In general we’ve found we want to build more of the experience for our users but we’re always open to working with partners.”

Page replies to a question about television that he uses and loves Google TV, but it’s still in the early stages.

Pichette says nothing has changed in Apple search relationship and traffic acquisition costs, though Apple changed the word in its search box from “Google” to “search.”

Pichette says people seem to always assume CPC declines are about mobile, but there are other reasons like network growth and emerging markets.

They don’t take the bait about how they’ll spend their cash.

Pichette said the bulk of that $8b mobile runrate is still ads.

Page says he’s excited, really excited, and quite excited about Google Fiber.

He’s about to try it himself at his home.

On the conflict between apps and search, Page doesn’t really believe it. “Over time, if we do our jobs right, you’ll have the same capabilities in both places.”

Page talks up how awesome Chrome is on mobile devices again, and how few people use it now. He’s really been hitting on this topic lately.

Page says YouTube can keep him entertained for hours. He tries to come up with the words “Gangnam style”: “It’s the recent video with the horse dancing, with 400 million views.”

Pichette is getting a bit into the financial weeds, talking about how they don’t hedge revenues, they hedge profits.

Arora on product listing ads — this is where Google just switched from regular shopping search to relationships with merchants. We have a billion products, Arora says. The listing ads bring Google closer to users’ intent because they can show reviews, pictures and pricing information.

Page talks about the early days of mobile again; Pichette says that travel and retail revenue fluctuate based on seasons and the larger market for them.

2:35 pm: Page and Pichette do their thank yous, and we’re done.

It’s nothing like your grandpa’s Safari. RockMelt for iPad caters to the shifting attitudes we have in the way we experience content on tablets. The result is an attractive mish-mash of an interface design that borrows heavily from Facebook’s Timeline, Pinterest’s tiles and Twitter’s ever-flowing stream.

As CEO Eric Vishria puts it: “It is unquestionably a really different beast. And that is a good thing.”

Philosophically, RockMelt as a product builds on top of the two predominant schools of thought in how we browse the Web today. Google champions intent-based search — type in a word, receive endless pages of links. Social surfing, the other school, posits that our friends are better referrers of new content than any algorithm. While still nascent, the meteoric rise of Facebook and Twitter, and their ability to deliver massive traffic around the Web, give the theory legs.

RockMelt exists somewhere in the space between the two. First launched in 2010, it’s a browser like Chrome or Firefox but with deeply integrated social features. Navigating the Web, the idea goes, shouldn’t rely on either philosophy entirely, but incorporate the best of both worlds.

As browsing has changed over the past two years, we’ve shifted on other fronts as well. We’re moving from desktops to smartphones. From text to visuals, from the static to the stream.

Confused? Here’s an example: Don’t expect a browser window defined by the blank search bar up top. Open the app and integrate it with your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and you’re presented with a never-ending stream of squares and rectangles of different stories, populated by the people you’re connected to. It’s sort of like a portal site, only it is one curated by the folks whose views you (presumably) care about.

The reasoning here: First, the mobile browser market is clogged with competitors. Dolphin, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Chrome — each one offers similar functionality, comes in a similar layout, all battling for the same slice of the mobile browser marketshare. RockMelt’s drastically different appearance, according to co-founder (and ex-Netscape veep) Tim Howes, makes it stand out among its contemporaries.

Second, consider the medium. We don’t use tablets in the same manner as we do our desktops. IPads are seen primarily as consumption-first devices, amenable to displaying products and content in easily swipe-able, fast-scrolling ways. There’s a reason sites like Fab.com and The Fancy have such high rates of purchasing through tablets.

So RockMelt for iPad takes our habit and works with it, presenting stories in pop-out panes that make content look more attractive.

“The thing about the Web is that it’s vast,” Vishria told me. “But it’s dirty.” RockMelt tries to solve the problem, as Vishria puts it, of combining the expansive nature of the Web with the beauty and richness of an app. Hence the new presentation.

Third, there’s the social component. Along with Facebook and Twitter integration, RockMelt builds another social layer into the browser itself. You can follow others who use the application, and the app will suggest more stories to you based on what they’re sharing. Moreover, you’re able to comment, share and add an array of “Like”-type emotions to each article (sort of like Buzzfeed’s “LOL” or “WTF” subcategories). The idea here is, not only will content circulate externally via Facebook and Twitter sharing, but internally via RockMelt’s additional social layer.

I’ve played with the application for the past two weeks, using it both with and without some of the social components. I’ll say this: It is attractive. It is fast. And to be frank, the initial feeling was jarring. When I imagine using a browser, I expect to experience the Web in a certain way, navigating my usual haunts via search bar, going to Facebook or Twitter only on occasion.

With RockMelt’s app, I feel like I’m browsing shelves in a store. I haven’t decided quite yet if that’s a good thing or bad thing.

Is this something I could come back to repeatedly? Is this too much of a shock to the system that I’m used to, the standby of the white search bar, the blank page?

Vishria believes that the process of discovery — the neat, pretty way content is wrapped up in little packages and presented to the user — will be what draws us in. Browsing and exploration will be what keeps us there. And to be fair, the search bar is still there — it’s just not the focal point.

Obviously the jury’s out on this — at least until the app has been in the wild for a few months or so.

To get a better sense of the product, check out RockMelt’s commercial below (complete with Honey Badger commentary).

Do Not Track — which aims to help users opt out of being tracked across Web sites for the purposes of targeted advertising — is contentious and still somewhat theoretical. But since Chrome is close to becoming the world’s most-used browser, if it’s not already, its support for DNT is pretty important.

Of all the major browser providers, Google had moved the slowest on Do Not Track, but had earlier this year agreed at the request of the Obama Administration that it would implement DNT.

Google spokesman Rob Shilkin said in an emailed statement, “We undertook to honor an agreement on DNT that the industry reached with the White House early this year. To that end we’re making this setting visible in our Chromium developer channel, so that it will be available in upcoming versions of Chrome by year’s end.”

When Do Not Track is turned on within a browser, a snippet that specifies “DNT:1” is added to the request header whenever a user wants to go to a new Web site. Once Chrome adds this to its full release, that will happen across all major browsers.

But critics say it’s not necessarily clear what sites and advertisers have to do in response to DNT being turned on.

That could be a significant problem, because users will think they’re not being tracked since they explicitly changed a setting (seems like a reasonable assumption!) — but they may just be making a request that can be ignored. Talk about defeating the purpose.

All the Web and advertising players are still sorting out how to deal with this; some, like Google, more reluctantly than others.

For instance, since Microsoft decided to turn on DNT by default in Internet Explorer 10, developers of the Apache Web server are now saying they will ignore Do Not Track requests from IE visitors because it goes against the spirit of DNT being a choice. Also, even though Facebook is doing its own ad exchange, it hasn’t agreed to participate in Do Not Track at all.

Image via Maxthon corporate blog.