Google vice president of product management Sundar Pichai has officially announced that the company's free Chrome OS (operating system) will be released for free in the autumn. The search engine giant also says it is currently working to bring the first Chrome OS-based device to market. On this, Pichai also confirmed that "We are working on bringing the device later this fall."

Reflecting optimism, Pichai was also quoted as saying, "It's something which we are very excited by...We expect it to reach millions of users on day one." Based on a Linux distribution, the design of Chrome OS revolves around the Chrome browser, which is currently used by more than 70 million users around the world.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether hardware makers will actually adopt the Chrome OS and start making devices based on it, or whether users will be willing to switch from a desktop-centric way of doing things to having a web browser as the operating system.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Ars Technica
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at AFP

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