I'd guess that the biggest strength of the iPad against this Google Tablet Concept is that it actually exists.

Yeah, a lot of things seem to happen "by magic" and one wonders a) what seemingly-invisible element on the screen is the user touching to make that happen and b) how did the user learn that? I didn't get that feeling from the iPad videos I've seen.

I agree (I made the video). There is actually bunch of thinking behind it, but we're leaving it rough because we don't want to pretend we're developing high-detail specs just yet, as doing so tends to lock you in to a certain approach - we really do prefer to experiment in code.

The point of the Chromium site is not to sell, but to be pretty open about what we're doing and what we're thinking early in the process so that our external contributors, who we value highly, can get access to the same information that our internal teams can and so that they don't get surprised by sudden public changes in direction.

It's a tough balance - not over-specifying yet being open, especially when people are used to everything a company puts out being a high-definition advertisement. This open development style is still new to me, and hope we'll get better at it with practice.

(FWIW, this is all personal opinion, not Google's).

Are you targeting a specific physical size with the concepts? Like someone else said, that device looks fairly big. It seems reasonable that what is best for a big display might not be best for a small one.

Also, as a general suggestion, one of the -worst- things about the current desktop is manual window management - please, please come up with an automatic system that works! The iPhone sidesteps this by only allowing one app at a time, but with several apps it'll be one of the make-or-break aspects of these devices...

Have you considered some of the good ideas of Robert Clayton Miller (watch the video http://10gui.com/video/)?

I particularly like how you can switch from one application to another by scrolling horizontally and then resizing the window's width as you need. Furthermore, the additional gestures with 3 and 4 fingers provide additional information bandwidth.

These ideas might solve some of the problems others in this thread have been pointing out.