"Pawn Stars" is the History Channel's highest-rated show and the second most popular reality show in America, coming in just behind the performance art that was "Jersey Shore." Now, Microsoft (News - Alert) has enlisted the services of Rick Harrison, his father, "Old Man" Harrison, Corey "Big Hoss" Harrison and their old pal Chumlee to bash Google (News - Alert)'s Chromebook laptop just in time for the holidays. In a commercial that warns shoppers not to get "scroogled," Rick and Old Man Harrison decline to purchase a would-be actress's Google Chromebook.

The actress has come to the Las Vegas pawn shop hoping to secure enough money to travel to Hollywood. The best line about Chromebook comes from Rick: "When you're not connected, it's pretty much a brick." Old Man Harrison suggests that she might get as far as Reno.

Microsoft's commercial also hits Google hard about privacy concerns. Rick tells the actress that Google only sells Chromebooks to track user information and to sell ads. Microsoft's sudden espousal of consumer privacy seems a bit hypocritical. This summer, Microsoft released an Xbox One with a Kinect camera that can track a user's every movement.

The company said earlier this year that users can disable Kinect data within the Xbox One's privacy settings. However, Microsoft hasn't clarified what happens to the parts of consumers' lives that Kinect sees when privacy settings aren't activated.

Chromebook is cheap because it's created primarily for Web use. Instead of using a licensed and downloaded copy of Microsoft Office, for example, Chromebook users would have to use Office Web Apps.

According to one point of view, Google has presciently created the laptop of the future, when all applications will exist in the cloud. From another perspective, that brick can't do anything when it's not connected to Wi-Fi.