This story ran in the print edition of The Seattle Times on Dec. 8, 2010. -Sharon Pian Chan
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.
Microsoft declined to comment on the announcement from Google. Its new operating system, Windows 7, has sold more than 240 million copies since its October 2009 launch.
Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., said he does not expect Chrome OS to take off.
"In a clamshell-notebook form factor, people have tried alternative OSes and they have all failed. Mac is the exception," O'Donnell said. "We saw various flavors of Linux. We've seen a few Android-based notebooks. None of these things have done particularly well."
He predicts people will balk at having to pay for a wireless data plan separate from their mobile phone.
Tuesday's announcement was scaled back from Google's earlier plans for Chrome OS. Acer and Samsung will make netbooks with Chrome OS. Previously, the company had said Hewlett-Packard and Dell were also interested.
The company also launched a Chrome Web store Tuesday featuring free Web applications for the browser built by The New York Times, National Public Radio and game developer EA.
Some of the applications will work when the computer is not connected to the Internet.
O'Donnell said it's a tall order to expect a computer to be constantly linked to the Internet. "Say there's a continuum from 0 to 100, where 0 would be running everything offline, 100 would be running everything online. Most people are in the middle going from 50 to 60 to 70," he said. "But Chrome requires you to be at 100."
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