Google Chrome OS heads to netbooks

Sticking a finger into Microsoft's largest business, Google said Tuesday it will start testing netbooks that run its competing operating system, Chrome OS.

While Microsoft dominates the operating-system market with Windows, Google's announcement represents the intensifying rivalry between the two tech giants.

The announcement of the pilot program came at a news event in San Francisco, with Google saying people could start signing up to test netbooks loaded with the operating system.

The netbooks are built for a networked world with the expectation that these computers will be continually connected to the Internet.

The devices lack hard drives, so the only applications they can run must be Web-based. People would also have to store their files on the Web instead of the computer.

The trade-off, Google says, is the netbook runs much faster without a hard drive.

"When you play with it and hopefully use it every day, you will realize it does in fact work," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said at the news conference.

The operating system looks very similar to Google's browser, called Chrome without the OS suffix.

The netbook startup screen looks like the browser startup page.

The pilot device, called Cr-48, will have a 12.1-inch screen, come with a Verizon 3G wireless plan free for the first 100 megabytes and have eight hours of battery life.

The keyboard is full-size but will not have function or caps-lock keys, to respect the etiquette of the Web, said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google Chrome.

Google did not say how much the devices will cost when they start selling.

Related