This is a quick entry because I had a thought about something, but it's also November and I'm working on NaNoWriMo. I have some stuff I was working on still in the pipeline, but it probably won't get finished and published until December or later, as it's much less time-sensitive material.
It has been essentially confirmed that Google is going to be rolling the functionality of ChromeOS into Android.
I'm conflicted about it, because at its core, this could be the answer to "Google should build a real OS" and the frequent complaint that ChromeBooks don't do anything if you don't have the Internet. (At this point, that's not completely true, but the point stands that the ChromeBooks are essentialy a laptop that has been distilled down to the core thing that most people aredoing on their computers these days: browsing the web.
Browsing the web is kind of a loaded phrase at this point, because so much productivity can happen on web pages that it's totally unreal. If you'd told me twenty (even ten, maybe five) that I'd be able to do all of my writing and budgeting and build presentations and even do programming in web browser windows, I would have laughed at best, or retched at the idea in horror, at worst. It's still "not ideal" if you're on a computer that's slow (fully fledged Word is faster and uses less RAM than Word Online, for example) but many people who aren't specifically into computers love the idea, because it reduces their own responsibility for things. People who care about backups and other things of that nature can be the ones doing backups and patching software.
Enter: ChromeBook. The ChromeBooks are cheap, they're acceptable fast, they essentially maintain themselves, and they have a user interface that has mostly evolved slowly over the past several years. There's little you even can do to the interface to make it very surprising, which has probably been a big help to the platform, as it provides a pretty consistent for what most people want to do today: web sites.
Ultimately, the Chromebook is perhaps the ultimate expression of what Google values in a computer: they're fast, they boot in no time flat, and they are almost purely and singularly focused on showing web sites properly and quickly. Chromebooks are also a noticeable brand. They're a growth segment in the PC market, and it has been interesting to see the platform evolve, since late 2010 with the single preview notebook, to where it is today, with ChromeBooks ranging from $150 to $1,500. ChromeOS has also been put on desktop computers, marketed toward kiosks and other public use applications, and small desktops, for use with an existing TV or monitor.
My gut reaction to the news that Google's ready to give up on the mindshare that ChromeOS has gotten. They'll probably keep the ChromeOS name on hand, and it's said that this may be to reduce duplicated effort, but I still wonder what the experience will be like. Android is a much more complicated experience and product than ChromeOS is, and not exactly in a good way. I worry that ChromeOS based on Androidwill be slower, won't get updates at a reasonable pace, or will need intervention from an OEM in order to receive updates, which is the state of Android on phones and tablets right now.
Google has also shown (with Android) that they're very capable of building experiences that are simply broken on larger displays.
It'll be interesting to see. People have often wonderd whether or not ChromeBooks still have a place now that you can get Windows laptops (real laptops that can run Word and Photoshop and Cross-Stitch-Maker '97 Pro) for $200. I think they do, because at the end of the day, even if you only spent $200 on it, it's still a Windows computer which often requires you manage your data and has the overhead of Windows for working with your data, even if you're still working with it in a browser. To that end, I was pretty excited by the idea of ChromeBooks and it has only started to make more sense as time goes on, but with the knowledge that this is happening, I'd have a hard time recommending one to somebody.d