Riva Richmond has an article today in the WSJ (sub req'd) that reports on an analyst conference call in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt said there were no plans for a "Google Browser." That's smart since Google has two browser partners (Firefox and Opera).
Product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg added on the call that Local was a very important component of Google's product mix. From the Journal:
Asked about which Google products aside from its popular search engine will help the company financially and when, Mr. Rosenberg said that local-search service Google Maps is "already a pretty significant" contributor. He cited Google Earth, which leveraged the company's acquisition of Keyhole Inc. to bring together satellite imagery and mapping, as a major success for the company. Earth has helped drive traffic to the local service, he said.
Previously Piper Jaffray had estimated that as much as 10% of paid-search revenues were coming from ads using geotargeting (Local). And enhanced geotargeting is one of the impressive features that Yahoo! has baked in to Panama. But more on that later.
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Related: A BusinessWeek piece that discusses Google's struggle and missteps in its efforts to expand offline, especially the print magazine experiment.
John Battelle has a nice summary of Google analyst call "takeaways."
Screenwerk 
June 3, 2006 at 7:12 am
I’m not counting out a Google Browser yet. The comments Schmidt made reminded me of Steve Jobs before iPod with video came out. I think Google has a lot of interest in a browser and the project will turn out to be a big moneymaker for them.