Google said it is planning to release its free Chrome operating system to go head to head with Microsoft Windows, later this year.

Sundar Pichai at CompuTex Taipei, Asia's biggest IT trade show said the OS will be available in the Autumn and he expects it to be downloaded by millions of users on day one. The open source operating system is based on the Chrome browser, which is designed to work exclusively with web applications. It will be available for laptops first.

It is unlikely that take-up will be that dramatic. Firstly the OS has to be adopted by hardware makers and secondly people have to be able to run the software they know and love on it. Google wants to break Microsoft's Windows monopoly of the operating system, which currently runs on more than 90 per cent of PCs.

Redmond said that that software developers would have to create different versions of the same application for different brands, which is something they cannot be bothered doing. Google said that since its operating system is more web focused the majority of software will run on it fine. We guess the games market could be dealt with by the likes of Steam and other cloudish based stuff.