Google has launched an audacious attack on Microsoft, announcing laptop computers called Chromebooks that will use its own operating system – rather than Windows – will ship in June.
The machines will be made by Samsung and Acer, two companies that have previously made machines running Microsoft's software.
The laptops will coordinate tightly with Google's "cloud" online services, and have almost no capacity to store information. Instead, the bare-bones operating system is essentially a web browser that steers users to applications like email and spreadsheets directly on the web, rather than storing software such as Outlook or Word directly on PCs.
The computers, which boot in seconds, will be available in the US and Europe next month and Samsung confirmed today that its model will launch in Australia in the second half of this year.
Acer confirmed its model will be launching in Australia slightly later than the Samsung, around August.
The search giant's Chrome operating system is Google's latest attempt to change how consumers use their computers and analyst say it poses a threat to the dominance of Microsoft's Windows.
The bare-bones operating system is essentially a web browser that steers users to use applications like email and spreadsheets directly on the web, instead of storing software such as Outlook or Word directly on PCs.
In another move encouraging people to move their computing off their PCs and onto "the cloud", Google on Tuesday launched an online music locker service in the US letting users store and listen to their songs wherever they are.
The operating system and Chromebook PCs expand on Google's web browser, also called Chrome, that competes against Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Earlier on Wednesday Google announced that there are 160m users of its Chrome browser, launched in September 2008.
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