An operating system (OS) based around Google Chrome is to be created, the search engine giant has revealed.
Chrome was launched nine months ago in a bid to rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google is now intending to challenge Windows by offering its own alternative.
Vice-president of product management Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson, engineering director, made the announcement on the company's official blog.
They explained that the lightweight system will initially be aimed at netbooks and should be available by the second half of next year, with speed, simplicity and security the main aims.
And although some areas of Google Chrome OS will overlap with its existing Android system, they noted that it is a separate project.
"Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems," Google stated.
The firm is planning to open-source the system's code later this year.
Microsoft has attempted to challenge Google's dominance of the search engine market through the launch of Bing and a recent poll, conducted by One News Page, indicated that 55 per cent of web users could switch to the new offering in the future.
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