Google attack on Microsoft and Apple in the laptop market

Just after the shock of the mobile phone market, Google's war to start immediately in the laptop market. He directed to the two giants Microsoft and Apple.

Having shaken up the mobile phone market, Google is now preparing to compete head-on with Apple and Microsoft in laptop computers with a range of Google-based "netbooks" due out this year.

Glen Murphy, the Australian lead designer on Google's Chrome operating system (OS) and web browser  projects, said the first Chrome computers would go on sale this year. The big vendors have signed up including Samsung, Acer, Asus, Toshiba and HP.

"Mostly Chrome OS is a browser; it's really just a way of letting you buy a computer and have the web be at the centre of the experience," said Murphy.

"We look at what everyone's doing with computers today and by and large most people only ever need the web."

Many computer users now do all of their chatting, emailing, reading, video watching and even word processing inside a browser but video games on the PC have always operated independently. But soon, Google will release a new version of Chrome with support for hardware-accelerated graphics, a feature also offered in the recently unveiled beta versions of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4.

Chrome OS is a separate project to Google's Android platform for smartphones. Several Android tablets are due out by the end of the year, including Dell's Streak and Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

"Android is very focused on the best mobile experience there is, Chrome is very focused on the best web experience there is - obviously those things aren't mutually exclusive," said Murphy.

He said the Chrome project formed out of the frustrations of Google's army of web developers, who were hitting the limits of what browsers could do when creating web applications.

"We wanted to build the best browser there was and if our competition decided to do the same things then that would be awesome - at the end of the day it's not about getting Chrome everywhere, it's about making the web better," he said.