It is the war of the tech titans.
Google will launch its own operating system, attacking the heart of Microsoft's business empire.
In a blog posting Tuesday night, Google Inc. said it will unveil Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks -- those small, low-cost, trimmed-down laptops that have become a popular mobile business tool.
The Mountain View, Calif., company plans to make the code available for outside software developers later this year and expects that netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.
The announcement comes nine months after the company, which grew on the strength of its Internet search technology, launched the Google Chrome browser for Internet surfing to compete with Microsoft Corp.'s dominant Internet Explorer as well as the Mozilla Foundation's free Firefox browser.
“This is a direct attack on Microsoft's revenue base," said Rob Enderle, a technology analyst in San Jose, who consults for the Seattle software company. “Microsoft's Windows operating system platform and its Internet Explorer browser are the keystone products the empire is built on."
Google said the new operating system, which is the background software that makes computers work, will eventually power products ranging from the small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.
The company believes its operating system will work better than rival Microsoft's Vista, the overwhelming market leader and descendant of Windows and earlier systems developed at the dawn of the personal computing age nearly three decades ago.
“The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no Web," Google said.
