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There is an epic battle taking place before our eyes, in our pockets and in our wallets. Smarthones have come to dominate consumer behavior and the headlines of media. What is the newest development with the iPhone? What are the newest and hottest Android devices this week? Can Microsoft make a dent in the mobile market? What kind of tricks does Amazon have up its sleeves? Does Facebook have a plan to tap into consumers' wallets through mobile devices?

Make no mistake, the pipeline between users' bank accounts through smart devices is what each one of these companies is looking to tap. Each one of these five major American technology companies is taking a different route to this one goal. Yet, each one of these companies is taking a different route to the same goal. Let's break down the roads that each one of these companies is taking in the quest to win the Mobile Platform Game of Thrones.

Google shipped a major redesign of its Google Search app today with a faster and more tablet-friendly interface for the iPad version. The launch page is now a spare, simple descendent of the iconic Google.com homepage for the post-PC era.

The search bar is front and center, collapsing to a top menu bar instantly when you put in your query. You can also access search history, Google Web apps, voice search and "Goggles" - image search using the iPad's camera - right underneath. The new Gmail app for iOS may be a dud, but this update to an already-great Google Search app makes it the best Google iOS app by a longshot.

Google gave Chromebooks a refresh for the holidays, introducing a new Samsung Series 5 notebook and dropping the price of Acer and Samsung Chromebooks to $299. The new Series 5 is sleek and black (and Wi-Fi only), an impressive-looking refresher for the ailing netbook category.

Google has also overhauled parts of the Chrome OS user interface. The login screen is now so fresh and so clean, and the new tab page now includes a shortcut to the file manager.

According to several reports, Flash for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will be ready by the end of 2011. This will be the final release of mobile Flash as future versions of Android will support it. At this time that only means that Samsung Galaxy Nexus users do not get Flash and since that device (or Ice Cream Sandwich) is not yet widely released, Flash for new Android device users is not likely to be a problem.

The question becomes: does mobile Flash really matter? For Android in general, the answer is yes, Flash does matter. For Android 4.0? Maybe. It all depends on how many Android Gingerbread users get the ICS push within the next couple of months and how much they rely on Flash. Most Gingerbread devices will eventually see ICS updates. Yet, with HTML5 being pushed by developers, this is a fork that Android users will hardly notice.

Google+ circles have been rolled into chat across all Google sites, including Gmail, iGoogle, Orkut, the Google Talk client, and even third-party apps. Previously, Google Chat was based on email addresses and was a part of Gmail. When Google+ launched, it had the same email-based chat widget that Gmail has. Now, anyone in your circles who has circled you back will appear in chat.

The chat list still shows your most recent contacts, rather than your full list, and you can use the search box to find people who don't appear. According to Google+ support documents, the chat relationships you had before this update are preserved and take priority. For example, your existing block list still applies. The order of contacts might appear differently in different places, but this Google+-enabled chat now applies across the board.

Google developers announced some improvements to the WebP image format they're building as an alternative to JPEG, which has become a standard across the Web. Today's updates add transparency, which JPEG does not support, so WebP will take on the PNG format as well.

The first version used lossy compression, so users would sacrifice some quality in exchange for small files that load faster on webpages. Today's changes introduce "lossless" compression, meaning users get smaller files without losing image quality. However, only Opera and Google's Chrome browser support the format natively, so it's a long way from becoming a standard.

Google has been making lots of tweaks to its search lately. Search is why we all came to Google in the first place, but these days it's taking the product we knew and loved in a different direction. It's changing the way queries work, turning "+" into a social search instead of an "and," and it's taking away chronological features in favor of what's hot right now.

In response to user feedback about the changes, Google gave us a new feature this week called "verbatim search." In its blog post, the Google search team warns that verbatim mode will take away all kinds of helpful things they've built for us. But users wanted a way to search for exactly what they want, and Google has built it. Here's what it does and how to use it.

A leaked YouTube redesign caught by Business Review USA shows a starkly different layout that emphasizes social sharing. It features Google+ and Facebook sharing tabs on a prominent profile sidebar. The inclusion of Facebook is surprising, but YouTube is a popular destination, which offers a perfect opportunity to introduce Facebook friends to Google+.

YouTube has been testing this design with a small percentage of users for several weeks. YouTube's integration with Google+ actually began in October, when Google enabled users to connect their YouTube and Google+ accounts. This brought a "Posted to Google+" tab of videos to users' YouTube homepages. But the leaked redesign takes the integration further, turning the homepage into a news feed that tracks trending and popular videos. It also emphasizes user profiles, showing Google's intentions to unify users under one Google+ identity.

The world's biggest search engine company turned its music initiative up a notch today. Google Music now includes an MP3 store, in addition to the cloud-based music storage that launched into beta in May. At the company's event in Los Angeles today, they removed the "beta" label from Google Music and made it available to all U.S. users. For the cloud storage part they launched originally, they're keeping the "free" price tag firmly applied.

Rather than charging for storage, as Apple and Amazon do, Google is allowing users to store up to 20,000 tracks for free. So how will they make money? They've partnered with three of the four major music labels (Warner Music didn't sign on) and several independent ones to sell high-quality, 328 kbps MP3 files to users. Google will take a 30% revenue share on each track sold.

Google Music went live for U.S. users today, leaving the invite-only beta announced this summer. It's free, and it lets you host up to 20,000 of your songs and stream them to your devices. You can also "pin" songs from the player, which will cache them on your device for playing offline.

You can also now purchase music from the Android Market. It's available in high-quality, 320kbps MP3 format, and you get a 90-second preview before you buy in the store. But to drive more sharing and purchases, the service is integrated with Google+. Music that's shared to Google+ can be played back in its entirety by anyone in your circles.