Chrome for notebooks only for now: Google

TAIPEI: Google Inc, the world's No 1 Internet search engine, will keep the focus of its Chrome operating system on notebooks for now, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president for Chrome, made the comment at a news conference during the Computex PC show in Taipei in response to a question on whether Chrome would also be available for tablet PCs.

He also said the company had no current plans to merge Chrome with its Android system for mobile devices.

Web-centric PCs, made by Samsung and Acer Inc using Google's Chrome operating system will go on sale in June, as it challenges Microsoft Corp and Apple on their home turf.

The bare-bones operating system is essentially a web browser that steers users to use applications like email and spreadsheets directly on the web, instead of storing software such as Outlook or Word directly on PCs.

The fast-growing market for smartphones and tablets using Google's Android operating system has quickly taken center stage for the Internet heavyweight, and some observers say Google should reconcile or merge the two.

Copyright Reuters, 2011