Google's Chromebook laptops on sale in June

GOOGLE'S NEW Chromebook line of laptops, manufactured by Samsungand Acer, will go on sale next month, furthering the company's pushinto computer hardware.

The laptops, which run Google's Chrome operating system, will beavailable online from June 15th in the US, UK, France, Germany, theNetherlands, Italy and Spain, with more countries following in thecoming months, Google said yesterday on its blog.

Google devised Chrome to be a faster, more internet-focusedoperating system, a bid to use its web-search leadership tochallenge Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac software. Google,which first announced the Chrome OS in 2009, offered a test versionof laptops with the software in December.

"We think users are really ready for this," said Sundar Pichai, asenior vice-president, at a presentation yesterday at Google'sdeveloper conference in San Francisco.

The Chromebooks, which start at $349, will rely mostly onapplications delivered over the internet.

They also will be available for businesses at a cost of $28 amonth a user, including software and support. For schools andstudents, the computers will be available for $20 a month a user.The devices rely on Intel's Atom chip.

Separately yesterday, it emerged that Google set aside $500million related to the possible resolution of a US justicedepartment investigation of its advertising business, resulting inlower first-quarter profit.

The expense trimmed net income to $1.8 billion, or $5.51 a share,in the period, Google said in a regulatory filing.

The company had reported first-quarter profit of $2.3 billion, or$7.04, on April 14th.

"Although we cannot predict the ultimate outcome of this matter,we believe it will not have a material adverse effect on ourbusiness, consolidated financial position, results of operations orcash flows," Google said.

The US justice department is investigating the use of Google adsby "certain advertisers", Google said in the filing.

Google gets almost all its revenue from online advertising, whichruns on its search engine and other sites, such as YouTube. Googlefaces an increasing array of scrutiny from regulators over itsmarket leadership and handling of users' data.

The Federal Trade Commission is preparing an investigation ofGoogle's dominance of the search industry and has alerted technologycompanies that it plans to gather information for the investigation,sources said last month. - (Bloomberg)