Google is developing an open-source operating system targeted at Internetcentric computers such as net books and will release it later this year, the company has said.

The OS, which will carry the same "Chrome" name as the company's browser, is expected to begin appearing on netbook computers in the second half of 2010, Google said in a blog post.

The Chrome OS will be available for computers based on the x86 architecture, which is used by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and the Arm architecture.

Prototypes of Arm-based netbooks began appearing last month at the Computex show in Taiwan and Google's support for the architecture could give it a significant boost. Micorsoft's mainstream Windows operating system doesn't run on Arm chips so many manufacturers were talking about using Linux or a version of Google's Android operating system. It's not immediately clear how much the two operating systems share in common code but Google said they are aimed at very different devices.