If pictures from Engadget are accurate, Google has replaced the Caps Lock key with a Search button on its ChromeOS laptops.

Google (GOOG)  has consolidated the caps lock and the shift keys together (notice the LEDon the shift keys) to make room for a dedicated search key on the keyboard.  There also appear to be some new browsing (forward and back) buttons above the 2 and 3 keys.

There has been a long campaign to get rid of the Caps Lock with the most recent attempts spearheaded by Pieter Hintjens:

Hintjens, the CEO of iMatix, has launched the Capsoff organization in a campaign urging hardware manufacturers to ditch the oft-abused and misused key. Hintjens’ plan is to build the entire infrastructure for the movement using only freely available tools from Google. He’s already set up a Blogger Capsoff blog and a forum at Google Groups.

“The Caps key is an abomination,” Hintjens writes on his blog. “It’s a huge key, stuck right there where the Ctrl used to be, and as far as I know, it’s only used by 419 scammers and Fortran programmers.”

ChromeOS gets announced on Tuesday December 7th with the likelihood of Google-branded devices ready for beta use.