Google's Chrome debuts in June
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Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, displays an Acer notebook running on the Chrome operating system at the Google IO Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.?[Shanghai Daily] |
Laptop computers using Google's Chrome operating system will go on sale in June, as the world's No. 1 Internet search engine challenges Microsoft Corp and Apple on their home turf.
The new Web-centric PCs, made by Samsung and Acer Inc, are Google's latest attempt to change how consumers and companies use their computers.
The bare-bones operating system is essentially a web browser that steers users to use applications like e-mail and spreadsheets directly on the web, instead of storing software such as Outlook or Word directly on PCs.
Moving daily functions onto the Internet removes the burden of time-consuming tasks associated with traditional PCs, like installing software and updates, backing up files and running antivirus checks, executives said.
"The complexity of managing your computer is torturing users," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told reporters. "It's a flawed model fundamentally. Chromebooks are a new model that doesn't put the burden of managing your computer on yourself."
In another move encouraging people to move their computing off their PCs and onto "the cloud," Google on Tuesday unveiled an online music locker service letting users store and listen to their songs wherever they are.
For nearly two years Google has touted Chrome as an alternative to Microsoft Windows, used on over 90 percent of the world's PCs, but faced delays launching laptops designed for it.
