Google is planning to launch an operating system for personal computers in a direct challenge to software giant Microsoft, which has long dominated the key market for software to runs PC applications, with its Windows programme.

Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director on Tuesday evening announced on their blog "a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve."

"We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better," they wrote.

Eventually, Google hopes to scale the software to full-scale PC's as well, they wrote.

Blog post

Also on Tuesday, US IT research firm Gartner reported that worldwide IT spending is on pace to total $3.2 trillion in 2009, a 6 percent decline from 2008 spending of $3.4 trillion, according to Gartner, Inc. Continued weak IT spending because of the economic situation combined with the effect of exchange rate movements has resulted in Gartner lowering its 2009 forecast from its 1Q09 projection. In March of this year, Gartner had forecast 2009 IT spending to decline 3.8 percent. 

"While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT budgets are still being cut and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen their purse strings," said Richard Gordon, research vice president and head of global forecasting at Gartner.

Last week, Gartner said worldwide PC shipments are on pace to reach 274 million units in 2009, a 6 percent decline from 2008 shipments of 292 million. Gartner expects the PC market to post positive growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, setting the stage for a healthy market recovery in 2010 with units forecast to grow 10.3 percent.