Google to Fold Chrome Operating System into Android

http://www.wsj.com/articles/alphabets-google-to-fold-chrome-operating-system-into-android-1446151134

by sanatgersappa • 11 years ago

510 475 11 years ago

wsj.com

onedev3• 11 years ago

Really, we're doing "Alphabet’s Google" now?

maxerickson• 11 years ago

A business publication would want to include Alphabet as clickbait.

wittekm• 11 years ago

Seriously, that's ridiculous.

Alphabet's Nest, for instance, would make sense - it's not a household name.

eropple7• 11 years ago

Consider that the target audience of the WSJ is much more "investor" than "technologist". You really think investors wouldn't want mention of a company that might be in their portfolio? 'Cause that company isn't "Google", it's "Alphabet".

tomphoolery• 11 years ago

Nest is actually a name in 100% more households than Google, considering it is nailed to a wall.

One time I tried to nail a Google to my wall. Larry was pissed.

nostromo• 11 years ago

It'd like to see them do a story about Alphabet's Google's YouTube.

jinst8gmi4• 11 years ago

Or one about Alphabet's Google's use of Alphabet's Google's Google+ for comments on Alphabet's Google's YouTube Red videos.

onedev3• 11 years ago

There's a funny chrome extension to be made here. I'll let someone else take the initiative.

saturdaysaint• 11 years ago

Have you tried Alphabet's Google's YouTube's Youtube Red?

jburwell• 11 years ago

While it looks odd in a technology context, for investors it makes sense because Google is listed officially listed as Alphabet. Therefore, the association between the two concerns is useful for less technically savvy business and investment readers which represent WSJ's primary audience.

icoder• 11 years ago

It took me like 10 times before I got the title. The rest of the sentence doesn't help of course.

lallysingh• 11 years ago

I'm guessing WSJ always wants to include the name of the stock involved.

bobbyi_settv2• 11 years ago

It's helpful for all the readers who are familiar with Alphabet, Inc., but have never heard of its Google subsidiary.

IgorPartola• 11 years ago

Maybe they could Google it :). I don't think Alphabet will ever be as popular as Google. That's like knowing that Comedy Central is owned by Viacom. Yes, that's true, but you probably don't care and don't really think about Viacom at all.

OrwellianChild• 11 years ago

I see what you did there...

It's going to take some time for news organizations to get used to this brave new holding-company world, eh?

jeffehobbs• 11 years ago

This made me crack up.

jahewson• 11 years ago

Awkward phrasing from News Corp's Wall Street Journal.

eropple7• 11 years ago

Awkward, if you're not considering it as a technical source (and it is, in its field). If your primary concern, as a reader, was monitoring potentially important information as it pertained to your investments, would you not prefer that they lead with the actual thing in which you may be invested? Is it not a lot easier to scan for "News Corp" than to have to make the associations in your head that "Wall Street Journal" is something that one of your investments owns?

IMO it's just "consider your audience" writ large.

coliveira• 11 years ago

Google asked for this, why are you blaming the media?

dredmorbius• 11 years ago

Actually, I applaud the WSJ's bold new vision of fully revealing the full chain of ownership of all corporate subsidiaries, components, shell companies, and other mechanisms and methods for hiding true oligarchic control.

tracker16• 11 years ago

It's especially funny considering they confuse/conflate Chrome (a web browser), ChromeOS (an operating system where all apps run in Chrome) and Chromebook (laptop running ChromeOS).

msoad• 11 years ago

Interesting development! Apple is taking "two separate platforms" approach while Microsoft and Google want to blend desktop and mobile. If you think about it makes sense. Microsoft and Google are going after a world were you pay for a cheap ARM device and it does work as desktop and mobile for you but Apple is going after customers who can pay for multiple devices.

But one thing is for sure, ARM is coming to desktop computing!

onion2k• 11 years ago

The only real difference with mobile versus desktop computing is the human interface. There are immense cost savings to be had in merging the operating systems for Apple devices if you can manage the code well enough; I'd be surprised if they don't eventually at least try to combine iOS and OSX.

nemo44x• 11 years ago

I agree. I love Apple's products but to be honest it is a bit frustrating sometimes when OSX doesn't interface with iOS.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 11 years ago

Many components are shared between the two. They seem to have a single mobile OS with different variants (iOS, watchOS, tvOS). Some day OS X will be one of those variants.

zmmmmm3• 11 years ago

The only real difference with mobile versus desktop computing is the human interface

Not limited battery life? The fact that the device "moves"? I think there are a few more differences than UI ...

haberman• 11 years ago

The original iPhone 1 presentation claimed "iPhone runs OS X": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VLb5XdxRm8&t=3m53s

Only when it actually came out was it clear that iOS was a separate thing.

kps3• 11 years ago

“The iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing.” — Tim Cook 2015/09/09

draw_down• 11 years ago

The only real difference with mobile versus desktop computing is the human interface.

The human interface is nearly the whole point of the device. But moreover, it's not true, the difference with mobile is right in the name.

shostack• 11 years ago

I'd take this a step further and summarize the strategy as:

Google: Blend devices so the experience is seamless, tracking across devices is unbroken, and get as much reach as possible with the free OS

MS: Blend devices so the experience is seamless, tracking across devices is unbroken, and then ultimately once people are sufficiently bought in, switch the OS to a fully subscription-based model with strong lock-in

Apple: Best experience for each unique device with strong ties between them because they make their money on the devices.

roymurdock• 11 years ago

One tweak: MSFT will probably keep the OS free (and might even consider dropping licensing/royalty fees for Office & other software) but will push the Azure cloud hard onto Windows users, especially in the enterprise space

reddotX• 11 years ago

don't forget about Ubuntu, they are doing the same thing with convergence (even before Microsoft and Google)

guardian5x• 11 years ago

I don't think they were first. Microsoft is working on that for many years now.

exacube• 11 years ago

or, Android is coming (if it hasn't already) to x86?

how well does a full-fledged Chrome on ARM perform? Does it even exist?

commandar• 11 years ago

Android has been on x86 for a long while now. There have been some Intel Atom based devices released commercially, for example.

bobbyi_settv2• 11 years ago

Even if they aren't officially moving to one OS, Apple seems to be "blending" too. The past several Mac OS releases have made it behave more similarly to their mobile OS in ways that, on their own terms, made the desktop user experience worse, for example changing the default mouse scrolling direction (to make it like "dragging" on a phone) and removing the ability to show time remaining for the battery instead of percentage.

achalkley• 11 years ago

But one thing is for sure, ARM is coming to desktop computing!

Yep and Apple's new MacBook and iPad Pro are a sign of Apple's future doing this.

johansch• 11 years ago

Ah, so Android won the fight.

ChuckMcM2• 11 years ago

Android has much better brand appeal than ChromeOS

oblio• 11 years ago

At this point, Android is about to win the fight of "client" operating system, overall. It definitely looks like the underdog in the Innovator's Dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma).

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

If there was a fight, and Android won, ChromeOS would just be abandoned. ChromeOS being folded into Andorid means that ChromeOS's time as a separate project to try things without disturbing the already phenomenally successful Android (and without being constrained by it) has run its course, and its time to apply ChromeOS lessons to Google's flagship client OS.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

Of course, why use a browser pretending to be an OS, when one can have a full OS that has lots of browsers to choose from?!

dsmithatx3• 11 years ago

LMFTFY - An OS (mostly) pretending to be a browser.

blinkingled3• 11 years ago

Took'em a while but better late than never I suppose. I have long been saying (on various forums :)) that this is the right approach.

Flash is dying off and if Android gets better desktop window manager and shell (the bar is already set too low - ChromeOS sucked with its stupid everything including WiFi settings in Chrome, tiny fonts and web-only apps) people will finally have a credible alternative to Windows desktops/laptops. Plus this gives Google a chance to do something like Continuum - without having to be beholden to x86 for apps like MS.

edutechnion• 11 years ago

July 2009: Ballmer told the crowd, "I don't know if they can't make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don't need two client operating systems. It's good to have one."

May 2010: Om Malik "Android Has Won — Time for Chrome OS to Move Along?"

bad_user5• 11 years ago

Chrome OS having just a browser UI with web-only apps is what made it appealing. I actually admired Google for releasing two competing operating systems and to me this is sad news, even though I've been an Android fan. You make it sound like Google is the one that needs a "credible alternative" to Windows, when in fact it is Microsoft that needs a credible alternative to Chrome OS and Android.

Speaking of which I don't believe in Continuum. It's an idea that's natural coming from a company that has a desktop OS and wants to leverage that in order to maybe win some market share on mobile. I first heard of the idea from Canonical with their Ubuntu phone, another company trying to leverage a desktop OS.

It's a cool idea for geeks, but made obsolete by cloud-enabled apps like Google Docs. Why would one need Continuum when the changes you make in Google Docs on your phone are reflected immediately on every device or PCs you have?

blinkingled3• 11 years ago

You make it sound like Google is the one that needs a "credible alternative" to Windows

With the new Windows licensing Windows is the better alternative to ChromeOS - you can do more at the same price and you can lock it down if you need to a la ChromeOS. In some ways Google is stepping up the game - with Android you can do more.

Good point about Google Docs use case however that's very limited - If I carry the shared storage of my phone with me, if I can blow up the phone to use two monitors and still have my missed calls, SMSs etc in front of me - it enables a greater use case. There is definitely merit in that if continuum is done right.

adventured2• 11 years ago

Microsoft doesn't need a credible competitor to Android at all. Anything they do in mobile is pure gravy. They're generating $20 billion a year in profit without one, and have seen zero meaningful harm to their profitability over the last five or six year rise of Android. It can easily be argued Microsoft will make a lot more money building software for Android and iOS, rather than competing with them. Office is more valuable than either Windows or Android. Azure is going to be a more valuable business than Android is for Google.

amyjess6• 11 years ago

Why would one need Continuum when the changes you make in Google Docs on your phone are reflected immediately on every device or PCs you have?

You're not thinking long-term enough. You should be asking, "why would one need a PC when you can just stick your phone in a dock?".

It's going to take a while for hardware to catch up, but in about a decade I think desktops will almost exclusively be used as high-end workstations for stuff like 3-D rendering, scientific number crunching, and maybe hardcore gaming, while anything with fewer demands will be satisfied by a phone using Continuum or something like it.

ocean33• 11 years ago

I would be a cool idea for normal folks. Instead of using a laptop they can connect the phone to bigger screen for watching movies/browsing/email etc. That is mostly the case of my friends/relatives who are not in IT/Business sectors.

mintplant3• 11 years ago

I've been waiting for someone to adapt Aura/Ash from ChromeOS to work with a regular Linux desktop. It would instantly become one of the more polished DEs available. Maybe this could help things along.

0xFFC4• 11 years ago

+1, considering status quo of DEs in linux.

RamshackleJ• 11 years ago

Nailed it

ChuckMcM2• 11 years ago

Seems like the expected development, when I first saw Ubuntu's presentation slides for Ubuntu in all things it really struck me that this was the way things would go. At the Microsoft Windows 10 event their ability to make it morph on multiple form factors seemed like they had done a lot of work to have the whole "phone tablet desktp" thing work everywhere. The challenges of maintaining multiple stacks has got to be huge.

So this is a good move for Google, ideally they cut down the infighting between the two groups, get rid of the lower 5% of both groups leaving them with a combined, more effective group with a well defined mission.

It will be interesting to see if they can make enough money at it though.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Android has so many problems it is even difficult to start talking.

Oletros6• 11 years ago

Please, start

billybilly19203• 11 years ago

They are still being sued by Oracle over the base the OS is built on.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Malware, viruses.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

One app interfering with others.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Stimuli to closed-source software.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Poor separation of personal data and "app data".

optionalparens5• 11 years ago

memory management, allocation, and garbage collection. Some of this is from Java, but for awhile, Android GC was a nightmare.

It's gotten better, but it still sucks in many scenarios. If you need to support older versions of Android, you can't count on many of the improvements at all to help you. If you've never experienced this, you probably never did any serious performance optimization and things like performance sensitive gamedev on Android.

ckaygusu• 11 years ago

Any sufficiently big project has its downs. Your comment doesn't give any information to audience. Care to elaborate?

bitmapbrother10• 11 years ago

Are you sure you're not the one with problems?

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

If this happens then the web as a platform will lose. No more Javascript everywhere, forget about all the browser improvements of the last years: we're going Java!

amyjess6• 11 years ago

I'm fine with that.

The web was supposed to be a, well, web of interlinked documents. Using the web as an applications platform has always been an ugly, ugly kludge.

Let's separate our document-browsing system from our applications platform again.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

You're fine with being to write the same app in various languages? You're fine in having a natural tendency to a monopoly in the OS landscape (because of costs)?

rhodysurf• 11 years ago

Yeah cuz Android doesnt have a web browser..

blumkvist3• 11 years ago

if you watch D conference with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs they both say that the browser will take a (giant) step back in favor of rich clients. It only makes sense, stuffing everything into the browser is a terrible proposition on its own for various reasons, but the development tools are very bad too, so no real gain.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

That's exactly what I'm criticizing.

Which reasons?

bdcravens4• 11 years ago

The ecosystem for building apps using Javascript remains strong (Cordova, Ionic, React Native, Titanium, etc). I don't see what bearing this would have on that.

seabrookmx2• 11 years ago

I don't think the tiny market share of Chromebooks is going to make any difference in Javascript's viability.

optionalparens5• 11 years ago

I think you are overdramatizing here. There are always new things building on the web as a platform. I don't really think people and especially developers cared enough about ChromeOS. If anything, Google has just shown more reason not to invest in its platforms early, or even a few years into the cycle unless they have huge commercial traction (i.e. Android).

The browser is a pretty terrible platform for most things to be honest. I say this as someone who is using it to develop their startup as a web app and as someone who has been doing web apps since there wasn't even such a term. When people at work used to tell me how amazing the browser as as a platform, I'd ask them to do simple things that the browser sucks at vs. other platforms. For example, I'd ask people to simply to do various kinds of positioning tasks, alignment, centering, etc. It's amazing how hard at various points in the history of the browser, css, js, etc. it's been to do these seemingly easy tasks. The lengths one has to go to just to get acceptable performance in many scenarios is shocking.

The browser is nice in many ways, but sometimes the ease of printing to the screen is a curse. I am reminded of people writing 20 line BASIC programs way back when and thinking that made them master programmers. The instant gratification and pushing aside of various concerns is great, until you hit those road blocks that are crippling for many types of apps. Somewhere there are old embedded dev colleagues of mine wondering why their new powerful computer is practically on its knees with a bunch of tabs open showing improperly aligned pictures of cats. The browser is great, easy for many things, but that does not always make something good and worth using for every task, or even most tasks. Sadly, a lot of what I see in the browser is cobbled together nonsense that does very little and reminds me of the machine that goes bing.

I know it's an unpopular belief here, but the browser is honestly built on a rotten core from rendering to security to data transport/format. Hindsight is always easier, but the thing is we do have it, and yet we continue to invest in it like there is never going to be another alternative.

I could go on, but suffice to say I wonder sometimes if continuing to build on the browser, and even the web itself is really worth the pain. I wish we'd take a step back and look at the internet itself, and if not that, than at least building other things on the internet like in earlier days. Sometimes I find myself wishing for simple text based menus or something like gopher because at least you found stuff, got things done, and they would be even faster and more efficient now that many of us have decent connections.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Thank you.

amyjess6• 11 years ago

Finally.

For years, Google insisted that there was an important difference because Android was for touchscreens and ChromeOS was for keyboards and pointing devices. But that went out the window when they released the Pixel. Suddenly, both Android and ChromeOS had to support touch, and there was no contest between them.

You see, ChromeOS is just a web browser running as the graphical shell. Android has a web browser, and it also has its own application platform. We end up with a comparison between "web browser + touch" and "web browser + touch + non-web applications", making Android objectively superior (when, before ChromeOS supported touch, you could argue that ChromeOS could have a better UI because it didn't need to support the peculiarities of a touch interface).

It makes no sense for Google to sell both a full-featured OS and a crippled OS.

billybilly19203• 11 years ago

I can only see 1 paragraph; why do people keep posting sites with broken content? Would be nice if people could link to actual content.

bsimpson4• 11 years ago

It's a WSJ original report, and the WSJ uses a paywall for everybody but Google News readers.

You can either find the same article in Google News; use a bookmarklet like Wait, Google Sent Me; or read The Verge's rehash of the WSJ article.

bduerst3• 11 years ago

They also don't paywall organic search traffic.

Search the headline in google, then click the wsj link. If you're using chrome just highlight headline, right click, search, and then click wsj link.

TranquilMarmot• 11 years ago

The Wall Street Journal will only let you read articles if you subscribe- if you google the article's headline and get at the site through google, though, you can read the whole article: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Alphabet%E2%80%99s+Google+to+Fold+Chrom...

PhasmaFelis2• 11 years ago

The above link minus pointless snark: https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+to+Fold+Chrome+Operat...

wvenable• 11 years ago

Take the URL and paste it into google to read it. Works for most paywall sites.

melling2• 11 years ago

Because it's easy to get past the paywall:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/hacker-news-faq-1-ho...

GPGPU• 11 years ago

It's not broken. Sometimes real newspapers that hire real reporters and do real reporting charge for their content. Not everything has to be free.

billybilly19203• 11 years ago

Oh, and it seems the story was completely fabricated by the WSJ. So we got one and a half paragraphs of lies, and a bunch of advice on how to read the rest of the lies in the article that may or may not work anymore...

thanks

Zigurd2• 11 years ago

I wonder if the name "Pixel C" for the new tablet presaged this.

But Pixel C is a pricey device. Chromebooks can be made very inexpensively. And Android would be suckey in an inexpensive laptop non-touch form-factor. I assume they have thought of this.

This will also be an interesting trajectory for getting tablet devices into business settings. It's not the response I expected to iPad Pro. I'd really like an Android-based direct competitor, which Pixel C isn't. Close, but not really.

If they do it right, it could be what Windows could have been: One browser runtime, one managed language runtime, one implementation language (or a family of them that compile to the same bytecode), across all form factors. But that "across all form factors" has eluded a solution so far. I don't blame Apple for not trying to get there first.

bsimpson4• 11 years ago

If you search the Chromium commit logs, you can see they are still actively working on features for the Ryu (Pixel C).

Part of this story hasn't been told yet. They announced it with Android, yet there is still hardware management work going on for the same device in ChromeOS. Now, WSJ is gossiping that ChromeOS and Android are merging, which would make continuing to do Ryu-specific work in ChromeOS even weirder.

akhilcacharya• 11 years ago

I hadn't heard of the continuing work before - it would make sense, however, for them to develop a tablet for ChromeOS and then switch later on in the design cycle.

I doubt they'll release a convergent OS anytime soon, that'll probably be a part of Android 7.0, which'll probably be announced next June.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

Now, WSJ is gossiping that ChromeOS and Android are merging, which would make continuing to do Ryu-specific work in ChromeOS even weirder.

Actually, it makes perfect sense, if, when ChromeOS merges into Android, Ryu (or its similar successor platform, by 2017) is going to be one of the targets for the merged OS, and some of the features of the merged OS that are important are based on the ChromeOS side of the fence.

Merging ChromeOS into Android is not the same thing as abandoning ChromeOS in favor of Android.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

And Android would be suckey in an inexpensive laptop non-touch form-factor.

Today's Android. Android with ChromeOS folded into it could look just like ChromeOS, except with the ability to install/run Android apps natively.

It could also look just like Android, but with the ability to install/run Chrome Apps.

It could even be configured to look, by default, like existing ChromeOS on desktop platforms and like existing Android and handheld platforms.

Zigurd2• 11 years ago

Well sure. Android will need to be a good car, TV, and whatnot os. Why not desktops? But that's what Microsoft broke their pick on. Windows 8 Was suckey on all form factors. Easy to get this wrong.

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

http://www.ubuntu.com/phone

mtw• 11 years ago

Chrome OS would have had more chances if they gave it more capabilities. Being limited to essentially chrome extensions as apps suck! Users want to install easily Atom, postgres or redis or even simple tools like GIMP without fighting against the machine

tennysonmach• 11 years ago

"Users", the vast majority of users, buy chromebooks because they're billed as inexpensive, secure, zero maintenance windows alternatives.

Not developers.

0xFFC4• 11 years ago

Developers has huge impact on peoples option. Every family/community has nerd which everyone talks to him before buying anything most of the time. If you want to dominate market share , it is only enough to dominate nerd people.

andybak• 11 years ago

That would negate the most important and unique feature of ChromeOS - it's literally impossible to fuck it up by installing bad stuff (or at the very least it's trivial to fix via a reset).

I gather this had made it popular in several markets.

AdmiralAsshat2• 11 years ago

Mixed feelings on this. As someone with two Chromebooks (one Pixel, one Samsung ARM Chromebook) , an Android phone, and two Android tablets, here's what I see as the potential benefits and tradeoffs:

+ Being able to run Android apps on a Chromebook would be awesome. There's already some limited support for this, but it would be nice for it to be official.

+ Taking over the Chromebook line would hopefully force Google to make document editing not suck on Android devices.

+ Android running on Chromebooks will hopefully make the display scale better on hi-DPI devices.

- ChromeOS is fairly lightweight and actually runs surprisingly well on cheap devices. I have no doubt that my Chromebook Pixel would run Android just fine, but the Samsung ARM Chromebook would probably chug, even though it's running ChromeOS well enough.

- Making Android run on laptops will hopefully make Google step up their Android document editing game, but as of right now it still sucks. Even the cheap Samsung chromebook was leagues ahead of using my tablet and a bluetooth keyboard in terms of trying to compose documents.

- The ability to install crouton on Chromebooks and have another Linux chroot on the side is an awesome feature of the Chromebook. I imagine that might be more difficult under Android, even though it still uses the linux kernel.

bduerst3• 11 years ago

It would be easier to convert to linux since Android is already a VM on top of it, right?

I'm hoping that since they're now targeting the desktop OS market that they'll make it easier to run native linux programs on Android. My biggest complaint of using ChromeOS on a pixel 2 is that there are no good text editors on the level of Sublime Text (which works on linux).

AdmiralAsshat2• 11 years ago

Have you tried Caret? I use it on my Pixel 1 and it seems to be modeled off Sublime/Ace.

mchahn• 11 years ago

My biggest complaint of using ChromeOS on a pixel 2 is that there are no good text editors on the level of Sublime Text (which works on linux).

Atom works great in Crouton on my pixel 2. I've switched to that as my full-time dev machine. I run everything but Atom in terminals. I run Atom in an X window (xiwi) and have no linux desktop at all. Lean and mean.

SXX• 11 years ago

Actually if Google going to push coreboot into Android/ARM market more aggressively it's going to help quite a lot with running GNU/Linux distributions there.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

ChromeOS is fairly lightweight and actually runs surprisingly well on cheap devices. I have no doubt that my Chromebook Pixel would run Android just fine, but the Samsung ARM Chromebook would probably chug, even though it's running ChromeOS well enough.

Plenty of inexpensive ARM devices running Android. I don't see that this is likely to be a major problem.

Making Android run on laptops will hopefully make Google step up their Android document editing game, but as of right now it still sucks. Even the cheap Samsung chromebook was leagues ahead of using my tablet and a bluetooth keyboard in terms of trying to compose documents.

If they're folding ChromeOS into Android, rather than just killing ChromeOS, I expect that (using similar Chrome apps) post-convergence Android devices will be at least as good as pre-convergence ChromeOS devices at document editing.

seabrookmx2• 11 years ago

There's quite a bit of info online on how to install a chroot under Android. Like with a Chromebook, you need root access though (aka. ChromeOS "developer mode" or a "rooted" Android device).

If this is really where things are going, it wouldn't surprise me if crouton contributors continued the project for Android post convergence.

jessaustin5• 11 years ago

Yes I hope crouton keeps going. For me it has been the best combination of price, functionality, and convenience.

voltagex_6• 11 years ago

The drawback to easy chroots is that no one tries to boot mainline Linux directly. Try looking for information on how to boot Debian on a Nexus 4.

rdl5• 11 years ago

This is the worst day in commercially available operating system security in my lifetime. There have been bad operating systems in the past (pre come-to-Jesus Microsoft, like 98 and XP...), but rarely has anyone taken a great security product (ChromeOS) and merged it with the worst currently-shipping security product (Android).

This is a horrible day for security.

kzahel• 11 years ago

It depends. Maybe we just see the Play store added to chromebooks, and chromebooks are rebranded as android devices. I mean, there's already so many different android runtimes/versions, what's one more?

guelo2• 11 years ago

With Marshmallow Android is moving towards a runtime-permission-prompt model similar to Chrome. They've also done a lot of work on sandboxing using SELinux. Also, after stagefright they started doing monthly security patches and have gotten buy-in from the OEMs to push those patches. Android's biggest security challenge has been getting the manufacturers and carriers to update their software but there has been a lot of work towards changing that, from moving big parts of the OS to userland so they can be updated independently of the core system, to applying business pressure. Presumably updates will be easier on Chromebooks than on phones.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

Still waiting for Samsung fixes....

ilurk• 11 years ago

runtime-permission-prompt model

So each app will continue to ask for access to everything and you choose between being info-excluded or giving away your data.

buy-in from the OEMs to push those patches

How does this work? Is there any legal obligation for manufacturers/vendors to provide these patches in X weeks?

If there isn't then I won't keep my hopes up.

from moving big parts of the OS to userland so they can be updated separately from the core system

How exactly? By moving from Android to google proprietary apps? If so then this is a two-edged sword as it inevitably binds you to google spyware. Either you own an half-phone or you give away your data.

Sorry if I sound bitter but I see what Android could be and get defeated by what it is.

I never owned an iPhone but my next phone will be one. Maybe I'll still be disappointed, but at least won't have to deal with CM, Xprivacy, manual updates and all the other shenanigans.

Disclaimer: I'm an increasingly disappointed Android user.

chetanahuja2• 11 years ago

"With Marshmallow Android is moving towards a runtime-permission-prompt model similar to Chrome"

This is horrible from a usability perspective. Note that large bulk laptop purchasers (schools, large enterprises with mostly web application requirements etc.) have been the biggest markets for chromebook. One of the biggest reasons for that popularity is the lower cost of management of chromebooks compared to windows or mac laptops. In that the base OS not only just works, it also just updates. A huge saving in admin time and headache. The other factor is that all user data is automatically in the cloud, which means backups/restores/replacements/upgrades are trivial operations now.

One way chromebooks can retain this ease of use/administration is by basically shipping a laptop with chrome running on Android OS but no other apps installable by the user (outside of chrome sandbox). This will get Google out of the two OS kernels management business but could still retain the essential goodness of the chromebook concept.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 11 years ago

There have been bad operating systems in the past (pre come-to-Jesus Microsoft, like 98 and XP...)

Desktop OSes are generally pretty bad. Unsandboxed Windows and OS X apps can do an awful lot with your computer.

rdl5• 11 years ago

Yeah, but they've been getting better over time. It's monotonically non-decreasing security, at least, and the desktop->mobile transition has been amazing from a security perspective. This is a step backward. The only question is how big is that step.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

Traditional UNIX is no different. Without containers every p0wned process has full access to $HOME and can do everything the user is capable of.

I really like that Apple and Microsoft are pushing for sandbox models in their OSes.

smt88• 11 years ago

Flash and Java are still shipping...

ctz• 11 years ago

Android will have good security just once they've added more stapled-on legs. Security doesn't come from engineering and good design, it comes from adding more things!

fiatjaf11• 11 years ago

Thank you for saying this! I am an Android developer and I wanted someone to come here and say good things about Android so I could feel safer for my job!

Mikeb854• 11 years ago

There's nothing insecure about Android. It just gives a few more ways to install apps (side loading for example) which clever social engineers/scammers use to their advantage. It's like saying your credit card is insecure because you gave it to the homeless guy on the street when he promised to only buy a sandwich...

pedrocr• 11 years ago

Android security is typically horrible when you consider that most phones ship with software that never gets updated throughout their life and has been put together in a quite haphazard way. It's not a fault of Android per-se but it's the case in pretty much anything that isn't a Nexus.

geofft7• 11 years ago

Android's attack surface is much higher than Chrome OS's. On CrOS I can usually get away with running questionable NaCl code because the NaCl runtime sandboxes what it can do, and on top of that, the browser itself is sandboxed by the kernel. On Android, questionable apps have direct access to the entire kernel system call interface, as well as to other OS features.

Personally, I'm not so much upset because Android is uncommonly bad (it's like any other system that gives untrusted users non-root access to Linux: you can probably get away with it, but eh), but because CrOS is uncommonly good.

legulere2• 11 years ago

The update problem is Androids greatest security flaw. Around 80% of Android devices out there run with known security related bugs: http://androidvulnerabilities.org

threatofrain2• 11 years ago

It's more like every single business, from ice cream store to accountant, habitually requests the same information from you. It's not exactly an Android problem, but somehow I feel it's less on iOS.

cwyers8• 11 years ago

Most of ChromeOS's safety "features" come at the expense of not being able to do anything; ChromeOS can't run arbitrary malicious code because it can't really run ANY arbitrary code. Yes, yes, Emscripten, the birth and death of Javascript, etc. -- the fact is that security through uselessness isn't a recipe for adoption.

ZenPsycho• 11 years ago

why do you consider running in a sandbox "useless" ? that's pretty extreme. you really can't think of any use at all for code running in a context where its ability to take power away from the user, and do things without the users permission is greatly reduced? Is your primary goal and idea of utility about doing those sorts of things?

..Or maybe you simply have a deficient imagination?

mehrdada3• 11 years ago

JavaScript is not the only way to do things; cf. Native Client[1].

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/native-client/overview

tracker16• 11 years ago

There's also pnacl, not to mention the fact that a LOT of what people actually do online is all done/doable in the browser alone. A modern browser is the most full-featured application platform that has ever existed in terms of what comes "in the box".

I'm all for allowing native applications a place to run, however that doesn't mean that ChromeOS was not able to do anything... both my parents and grandparents are all on ChromeOS laptops now... why? It's all they need, secure and I haven't had to remotely clear out any malware in over a year.

joosters2• 11 years ago

ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want. There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions. It's far from useless.

The update system on Chrome is wonderful, in that it just happens. No strange dialog boxes, popup messages or confusing options for the computer-illiterate. It just goes ahead and does it. A power user might not like that, but it is a great system for a huge userbase.

How many insecure ChromeOS devices are there out there? Very few, I'd expect. Not many other operating systems can claim this.

geofft7• 11 years ago

As a developer, an unjailbroken Chromebook is my preferred local terminal, because all my work involves SSHing to servers anyway. The Secure Shell and Mosh apps work great (and I even use the Mosh app in Chrome on "real" OSes, because it's simpler).

Before Chrome OS, I ran homegrown minimal Linux installations with a separate user account to run Firefox. It was way too much overhead for me to be excited about maintaining, and paying $200 for a secure architecture and security updates by the most competent people in the industry was super attractive. I can do servers very well; I don't also need to do desktops, let alone my personal desktop.

eli3• 11 years ago

Couldn't you make a very similar argument for most smartphones and tablets? Their adoption seems to be going pretty well.

bitmapbrother10• 11 years ago

What an ignorant comment. To call Android the "worst currently-shipping security product" is representative of your knowledge on the matter.

rdl5• 11 years ago

Within the space of general purpose desktop/mobile operating system products: Windows 10 (pretty good). OS X (not great -- which is a shame). Most Linux distributions (OK to good as shipped, can be great). Most BSD distributions (good to great). iOS (fucking AMAZING). ChromeOS (great, RIP). Windows Phone (honestly don't know much about it). BB OS 10/QNX (great, but irrelevant sadly). And then there's Android.

castis• 11 years ago

rdl works on security at CloudFlare. What do you do?

rtpg• 11 years ago

How do you qualify Android as the worst security-shipping product? Is it mainly due to the lack of sound update mechanisms? Because conceptually, Android's model (each application is its own Unix user) seems pretty good

DominikR2• 11 years ago

I don't know what's so horrible about an OS that by default encrypts all data on the device, allows applications only to run in a sandbox and uses SELinux.

devanti• 11 years ago

Security aside, I would argue that 98 and XP were the best versions of Windows during that period

ygra• 11 years ago

98 was so bug-riddled that only 98 SE was actually usable. And I'd argue that Windows 2000 was much better-liked than XP on that period. XP was horrible at launch and needed two service packs to become actually liked.

melling2• 11 years ago

Nah, you just don't see the big picture. You're coming at it from the tech side. It's better to look at the business side. Microsoft has 89% desktop market share, so they basically own the desktop. Apple will never be a real threat because of price. Chrome/Android has an excellent chance to be a real alternative on the desktop. if it gets a large enough market share, perhaps we'll see Adobe's apps, for instance, along with all other major apps.

bphogan2• 11 years ago

Is Apple really that much more expensive? Or is that just something that people believe because it used to be true? I keep hearing this repeated, but I bought my dad a $499 Mac Mini.

With Microsoft producing a laptop of their own that starts at $1499, I think all we can really say is "Apple doesn't produce bargain laptops".

acdha5• 11 years ago

Apple has a significant, growing share of the computers which people buy for themselves. If you go to a conference, coffee shop, etc. notice that more than half of the laptops are Macs.

Windows has a huge lock-in for the business world due to compatibility, and a few other niches like high-end gaming for similar reasons. Without API compatibility that's a really tough space to get into.

It's quite believable that Android/ChromeOS will take over the netbook market by being cheaper than Windows, and the premium personal market – which is where most of the profit is – if they can get quality hardware shipping at prices competitive enough to make up for the lack of applications (almost all Android apps will need some sort of UI modifications) but it really doesn't seem like they'll get anywhere in the business world. Cracking that means either convincing everyone to drop legacy apps for web apps or remote clients (how many more decades?) or offering API compatibility (invest heavily in WINE?) — otherwise, the cost of a Windows license isn't that much (especially with 10) and certainly not enough to push someone towards the most limited option.

gopowerranger2• 11 years ago

ChromeOS is based on Linux so, please, let us hear just how bad you are saying Linux is.

jordanthoms4• 11 years ago

What about if it's Android that gets killed, not Chrome OS? Then it'd be a great day :)

zacharypinter• 11 years ago

That's where I thought they were heading when ChromeOS got support for running Android apks.

jessaustin5• 11 years ago

That's an intriguing possibility. Given their relative marketshares, even if the plan were to kill Android in favor of ChromeOS, they'd probably say exactly what they're saying now.

frik3• 11 years ago

I hoped Google would merge Android into ChromeOS, a much more lightweight OS. Now they are stuck with the broken Java UI architecture (too much sits in the main thread, too many object oriented classes). Low latency UI isn't possible by the initial pre-Google (Android company) bad design choices. Even my high end Android phones is just as fast and responsive as the iPhone 6s but has 4 times as much CPU and a lot higher CPU raw speed and 4 times as much RAM. Beside that Android is the good guy, it's the Win95 20 years later - an universal OS that can be used for many things without restrictions. The Android 5+ UI theme is really outstanding great, I personally favour it over iOS 7+ and Win8+. Maybe Android will get HTML5 web apps as first party citizens. And don't forget about the lovely Go language.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

I hoped Google would merge Android into ChromeOS, a much more lightweight OS. Now they are stuck with the broken Java UI architecture

If, as stated in the article, they merge ChromeOS into Android, rather than abandoning ChromeOS in favor of Android (which seems to be how you and many others have interpreted it), they aren't limited to what is currently in Android, since they bring all the capabilities of ChromeOS are now in Android. A merger is functionally equivalent regardless of direction, which just becomes about branding (and its hardly surprising that Android is the more marketable brand.)

eggnet• 11 years ago

That's a pretty bold statement to make. The announcement contains zero detail, to the point that I'm left questioning what the purpose of leaking the information was other than page views.

serge2k2• 11 years ago

Really don't want Android on a PC.

bitmapbrother10• 11 years ago

And I really don't want Windows on a PC.

optionalparens5• 11 years ago

I guess you don't like PC gaming or using a host of Windows only powerful apps.

Come on, I run OSX and various flavors of Windows, Android, Linux, and BSD at home. Use the right tools for the right job. Windows isn't so bad and is pretty stable these days. I actually have more problems with OSX doing stupid stuff after updates or Linux murdering my hardware/desktop every few months vs. windows. My primary dev env is Linux and OSX, but I still use windows for gaming, personal use, etc.

It's not hip anymore to just rip things because they are MS, closed-source, whatever. Grow up. Every OS does many things better than the competition. Acknowledge that most of the major OS's are pretty good and use the ones that do what you need instead of ripping on them.

serge2k2• 11 years ago

Then use linux.

PaulHoule• 11 years ago

Looks like what Win 8 would have been if Microsoft had already had a tablet operating system.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tablet_PC

jallmann• 11 years ago

Will be interesting to see just what form the combined OS takes, particularly which elements from ChromeOS carry over.

It's notable that iOS and Android still don't have native support for composing declarative UIs, notwithstanding marvelous hacks like React Native. Web technologies aren't perfect, but the use of markup for UI with well-integrated APIs is something that WebOS, FirefoxOS, etc got right a long time ago. It doesn't even have to be HTML... look at QML.

I'm hoping that Android will take on some of those characteristics, and not subsume ChromeOS without a trace.

comex• 11 years ago

So what does this mean for security?

Since its inception, Chrome OS has made security a focus and put a large amount of work into it, everything from bootloaders to Linux kernel features such as seccomp-BPF and KASLR, to complement the existing high security of Chrome itself. It also borrows Chrome's silent and fast update mechanism, allowing for frequent security updates. Its sandbox may feel somewhat limiting, but for those who do manage to stay within it, Chrome OS is probably the most secure desktop platform in common use.

Meanwhile, even if Android's update issues were somehow solved, it has a pretty bad security reputation even apart from that, with a long list of historical vulnerabilities which could be basically said to stem from a lack of priority given to it (e.g. from designs which, while not inherently insecure, unnecessarily open up attack surface that could be eliminated with a better design, such as in the case of the "master key" vulnerabilities; or just from crappy code, such as binder - whether caused by lack of auditing or just lack of security awareness among its authors I don't know, but both can be considered part of making security a priority). Maybe things have gotten better, and I don't have that much experience with Android, but there is simply no comparison between the general Android app sandbox (which allows native code) and what you get under Chrome with NaCl and such. The latter isn't perfect (as I know, because I've exploited it repeatedly), but the attack surface to examine for bugs is just much smaller than on other systems. I'm not really giving it any justice with this brief description.

I guess that if you're especially worried about security you could just only use Chrome on Android, and not install or use any other apps, and that would get you most of the way there. Indeed, if you do so, you can still have access to the Chrome Web Store's paltry selection of apps - it's cross-platform, you don't have to go for the OS designed around it...

But essentially nobody will do that. And even if they did, the recent Stagefright vulnerabilities demonstrate the difficulty of accounting for every potential attack surface on an OS, and thus the benefit of having the OS engineers design the lockdown rather than the user coming up with something ad-hoc. (Plus, today at least, even under Chrome's sandbox, Android's version of the Linux kernel is not as secure as Chrome OS's. And again, this is all assuming Android slow update problem is solved, which is a pretty big assumption considering how long it's been around; if it isn't, that's already enough to basically doom platform security.)

So if Chrome OS is really folded into Android, the end result, I think, will be the destruction in practice of something that was really quite unique in the security world. Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic - after all, those same security engineers could now work on Android. But I am, because even if work is done on it, the platform just comes from such a different place that it would be hard to make the same.

iMark• 11 years ago

Oh, thank goodness.

Both operating systems have their merits, but require Google to split their focus. And yes, this is in contrast to iOS/Mac Os/watchOS/tvOS, which is a common OS divided by UI

arthurfm• 11 years ago

Since Chrome OS currently includes Flash Player but Android doesn't, could this mean that Flash Player will be removed from Chrome on all platforms in 2017?

romanovcode• 11 years ago

I can only hope Flash Player will be removed from every platform in existence in 2017.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

Finally! I never saw the purpose of a browser pretending to be an OS.

Had they tried something like a Smalltalk image like OS, using for example Dart instead of Smalltalk, that would be quite interesting.

Now a browser?!? All OSes already have a browser and are much more feature rich.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

Finally! I never saw the purpose of a browser pretending to be an OS

ChromeOS wasn't a browser pretending to be an OS, it was an OS with a browser as the GUI shell.

pjmlp19• 11 years ago

When we have a browser team trying to make it I into an OS, it is a browser pretending to be an OS, regardless how the technical stack looks like.

zmmmmm3• 11 years ago

I really hope this actually means "full" Chrome (as in, plugins, chrome apps, all the rest) and "full" windowing capabilities are coming to Android and not just that Google is cancelling ChromeOS and using some renaming and tweaks to Chrome on Android as a fig leaf to pretend otherwise.

bsimpson4• 11 years ago

I imagine that the lack of a DevTools front-end and extensions on mobile are product decisions, not technical ones. There's probably a compiler flag you could flip to compile an APK with support for both. Mobile devices have historically been small and underpowered; Google may have decided that including extensions would expose too much surface area to slow the browser down and/or kill the battery on a mobile processor. Similarly, they must have decided that the DevTools UI was designed for computers and wouldn't make sense on a small touch screen.

I'll be very surprised if they remove either feature from future Chromebooks.

EvanPlaice• 11 years ago

ChromeOS is nothing but Linux with persistence sandboxed by default. All of its apps are nothing but webapps wrapped in a desktop app launcher ala Google Web Toolkit.

Merging with Android means nothing really, unless they plan to replace java-based Android apps with a runtime that natively supports webapps.

Lets call this what it really is. Alphabet/Google is killing any project that doesn't directly contribute revenue via advertising or Google Play sales.

untog• 11 years ago

Lets call this what it really is. Alphabet/Google is killing any project that doesn't directly contribute revenue via advertising or Google Play sales

Not really. This is Google rationalising their client OS strategy to be one rather than two. I'm amazed it took them this long.

unless they plan to replace java-based Android apps with a runtime that natively supports webapps

Replace? No. But Android has been picking up a lot of features that allow webapps to behave like native ones. Home screen installation, notifications...

orionblastar• 11 years ago

It means they can sell Chromebooks for under $300 that run Android/ChromeOS that can run Google Play apps in the Chromebook. I am assuming they are merging ChromeOS and Android to make it runs apps from both platforms to increase the number of apps it can run.

This is sort of what Apple did when they bought out Next and merged NextOS with MacOS to make Mac OSX that ran Unix apps along with Mac apps.

If only Microsoft would merge Windows with Linux to make Winux or something that runs Windows and Linux apps.

adventured2• 11 years ago

Lets call this what it really is. Alphabet/Google is killing any project that doesn't directly contribute revenue via advertising or Google Play sales.

That's obviously not true. See: Google Cloud Platform, Calico, and so on.

froo• 11 years ago

You could probably rewrite the previous statement as

"Alphabet/Google is killing any product that doesn't directly contribute ongoing revenue"

That would include Google Cloud like you mentioned and exclude Calico as that is currently a research project.

alexkavon• 11 years ago

Fucking finally.

shmerl• 11 years ago

I'd prefer them to fold Android into glibc Linux instead. This libc division with bionic is very annoying, especially when it comes to closed drivers.

The last thing we need is Android expanding to desktop and causing even further rift.

nicklaf• 11 years ago

My thoughts exactly.

I can't stand Android (or smartphones in general). There is something fundamentally wrong with asking the user to install the JRE on a separate machine just to get a login shell on the phone.

I was very sad the day my N900 died, which was a better Linux workstation (with a real keyboard) in a phone-sized device. But then the cheap Acer Chromebooks came out, and Coreboot makes installing vanilla Linux such a snap. The Acer Chromebooks are light enough that I can almost carry it around and use it like I would a smartphone.

Being able to make calls through some kind of unlocked Chromebook / phone hybrid would be a step what my N900 offered, but on the other hand, I just despise Android so much from the point of view of a Linux user that I'm not sure it's be worth it.

When I get around to it I'll probably just build a phone using FONA.

sunnyps• 11 years ago

You don't need to install JRE to get a shell on an Android device. Just install adb[1], enable USB debugging on your phone and run adb shell. adb is a part of the Android SDK but you just need the adb binary which doesn't have any extra dependencies AFAIK.

[1] https://developer.android.com/tools/help/adb.html

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

Doubt it. Bionic has Android-specific features like system properties which the Android init initializes as the property workspace. I think they could be factored out into a utility library since it's just shared memory and doesn't depend on any libc-private functions, but I'm not sure. There are likely other Bionic modifications, too.

kozukumi4• 11 years ago

I wonder how Microsoft will respond to this? Come July 2016 will Microsoft really stop the free upgrade from 7/8 to 10 or will they just make Windows free to consumers? Obviously there will still be a (small) charge to OEMs and for business users they will still charge for the Pro and Enterprise versions but I think it is time for Windows Home to become free.

rogerbinns• 11 years ago

Also what about the folks who tried to install Windows 10, but their installer gives up with the "Something Happened" error? Will Microsoft take calls to fix their bugs, or are those unable to upgrade because of choices Microsoft made in their code out of luck?

voltagex_6• 11 years ago

I ended up buying a whole new copy of Windows after my "upgraded" key was declared non-Genuine. Not a great experience, but I need Windows for my current work.

mattmanser3• 11 years ago

Windows will never be free to consumers, they still charge for new installs. A windows tax of 5%-10% on virtually all desktop/laptop computers is not small.

kozukumi4• 11 years ago

Yes probably to the OEMs, like I said, but I suspect in the future a current Windows consumer will be able to upgrade pretty much any version of Windows to the latest for free.

People see the OS as free these days. They get updates to their iPad, iPhone, Mac and Android (kind of, depends on the OEM) without having to pay.

mcintyre1994• 11 years ago

It's going to be really interesting where they end up with tablets because right now Android on tablets is pretty rubbish. And that's not just an apps thing - it's the only one without split screen apps for example. There used to be a tablet UI with ICS, there's very little to distinguish them from a blown up phone at this point.

It seems Apple have been very successful with iOS, but making smart enhancements like gestures and split screen that Google just never did. And of course Microsoft are doing very interesting things with Windows on tablets.

dsmithatx3• 11 years ago

Only one question hearing this news. Will my Chromebook run Android or am I stuck with ChromeOS with no new updates?

crb• 11 years ago

https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en

cwyers8• 11 years ago

Google wants to be in the enterprise market. Microsoft dominates the enterprise market right now, and they're doing a lot of things (Surface, Windows 10, Office 365, Azure) to extend their dominance. If you look at new versions of Office and don't see anything new in there for you, it's because you're not looking at the collaborative space. Microsoft is pulling the rug out from under Google Docs (which for some reason Google rebranded as Google Drive because they're so terrible at naming things) by adding anything Google's services have over Office AND having backwards compatibility with current Office docs. Google can't match that. Apple meanwhile has the MacBook line, which was and may still be the laptop to beat in the ultrabook space. They also have the iPhone, which is the top dog for people who can afford them, and the iPad, which has dominated the tablet space in terms of productivity. (Android is dominating the tablet space for consumption, but that doesn't help nearly as much in terms of enterprise).

The move to convertible devices is being driven by and catering to enterprise users. Microsoft is in the lead here with the Surface, and they're trying to extend this to their phones but they may not be able to overcome the handicap of nobody wants their phones. Apple is playing from behind here because there's walls between iOS and OS X that they won't cross, but they have inroads into the enterprise space, they have enough native iOS productivity apps that work well on tablets (Adobe and ironically Microsoft are both heavily into the iOS productivy app space, and that's a huge part of the market) that the iPad Pro is... unappealing to me personally but quite possibly will be successful in the marketplace.

Google has... Chromebooks, which have no apps and no market penetration outside of the very, very captive education market (where IT administrators just want computers so locked down that teenagers can't do too much damage). And they have Android, which (in tablets at least) has almost no enterprise penetration and very little in terms of productivity apps. And the merging of ChromeOS with Android in order to tackle the enterprise market and the Surface line and the iPad Pro makes a lot of sense. But I'm not sure either papers over the other's flaws enough to make it viable, and I'm definitely not convinced that they're going to be able to be combined in a way that incorporates what ChromeOS does well that Android doesn't, like system software updates.

e402• 11 years ago

Microsoft is pulling the rug out from under Google Docs

However, Office 365 for the Mac (2016) regularly crashes. All 4 of us that use it at my company have experienced this. I can't remember the last time Google Docs crashed or screwed up a document.

So, it amazes me that the quality of MS Office is so incredibly low. This is not the way to win any market.

microtonal2• 11 years ago

However, Office 365 for the Mac (2016) regularly crashes.

Presumably, OS X 10.11.1 fixes some problems with Office 2016 when you are running El Capitan. I am two-minded when it comes to Google Docs and Office 365. On the one hand, Office 365 is an offer you cannot resist (especially the academic pricing). Microsoft Office documents are a fact of life, Office 365 gives you continuous updates and 1TB of OneDrive space.

On the other hand, last time I compared them, Google Docs' collaboration story was far better. Collaborative editing in Docs is really smooth, while in Office it was hit and miss.

trengrj• 11 years ago

The quality of MS Office on Mac in incredibly bad. Last week I had MS Office popped up around 10 sign in windows and then crash due I think to being on a corporate network which used a proxy.

gopowerranger2• 11 years ago

Microsoft has the enterprise market. True. Google and Apple have everything else. Don't minimize that.

blazespin2• 11 years ago

This is a backup plan in case Google loses the fair use case against oracle / java.

hardwaresofton• 11 years ago

As a FirefoxOS user, I'm excited to hear this news, in the hopes that eventually people will realize that HTML+CSS+JS is not a terrible stand-in for a full-fledged OS (iOS/Android), depending on the task.

pgrote• 11 years ago

I've used a Chromebook as my machine for the last 18 months. I love it.

Anything I need to do, I can do through web services, remote desktop or chrome remote desktop.

The one thing I have come to love about ChromeOS is the security. I don't need to worry as much and I have confidence in using my Chromebook all the time.

My phone is android and maybe I am just suffering from Verizon abuse, but I've never had the same security confidence with my phone. And I think this will be the issue. Most people only know Android through a phone experience and it's left a bad taste in their mouth.

Anyway, the Google folks are smart. My hope is the security and reliability of ChromeOS is what is taken and folded into Android.

mark_l_watson2• 11 years ago

I agree re: good Chromebook security. (I also don't worry too much about security when using an iPad.)

I specifically only use a conventional laptop when I need to use IntelliJ or otherwise do local development.

I think that computer related crime will increase and using more secure devices, when possible, makes a lot of sense.

ChrisLTD• 11 years ago

Kinda funny to say a Chromebook is your machine, when your setup relies on remote desktop access to a more capable computer.

on_and_off2• 11 years ago

The update cycle is also something that I would like to see on Android. The issue is a bit blown out of proportion since the support libs & play services are huge parts of the platform that are constantly up to date but it would still be nice to be able to count on the latest core APIs to be available on most devices in a couple of weeks.

I don't have high hopes though, the obstacles against this seem pretty huge.

arihant• 11 years ago

Google hit the sweet spot between Android and Chrome when they announced the continuity like features which they actually never released. Still, without being able to beam Android apps to Chromebook, I love the integrations my Android Wear, phone and Chromebook have.

They should just integrate it closer, which can be done without running the same OS. Heck, even Microsoft could do it. Just how do companies justify screwing over customers to simplify board meetings. About the last thing I want my trusty Chromebook to do is for it to be become Galaxy Booktab Duos III. Which, given that I have Samsung version, it will become.

skoocda2• 11 years ago

The rumours about Android app support for ChromeOS were more promising. I'm able to get a lot of functionality out of my chromebook, exclusively due to the crouton extension. I've gotten through most of an electrical engineering degree on ChomeOS including developing android apps, writing and deploying javascript apps, and using ROS and PCL. I'm afraid this change will nix all of these, and I'll have to get a Mac to keep some UNIX functionality and maintain a rock-solid web-browsing experience. Not excited about that.

rocky1138• 11 years ago

Why not Ubuntu?

spinchange• 11 years ago

Lots of public schools are using Chromebooks. Aspects of the Chrome OS model are key features and justifications for it. As a taxpayer and parent in a school district that buys a lot of Chromebooks, this is an irritating pivot and feels like strategy tax because Chrome OS was the more visionary and future-forward model. I have a feeling that a not-insignificant portion of America's pubic education system was betting on it.

(edit: I know Sundar and Google are extraordinarily brilliant and know what they're doing...I am just envisioning Pixel C type devices, and this isn't the direction I think anyone thought Chromebooks were headed. I'll try to be more optimistic!)

Periodic• 11 years ago

The biggest difference between Android and Chrome OS for me as a user is how it handles user multi-tasking.

I've tried using an Android tablet for work. It's nigh impossible, even with a keyboard because it doesn't support multi-tasking well. Sure, it supports OS multi-tasking, but it doesn't support user multi-tasking.

Android is based around the single-task model. You have a foreground app that takes up the entire screen and other apps are backgrounded. You can switch between apps fairly quickly, but you can only have one open at a time. There are some attempts to fix this, such as Samsung's split-screen, but none are officially supported. We've even moved to having Chrome tabs use this model.

I love my Chromebook for work though. It does everything I need to do, including having multiple document windows open for multi-tasking.

Chrome OS is built on a multi-task model. You can have many windows open at once and quickly switch between them without losing state or visibility.

Windows tried to merge the two with Windows 8 and it was a terrible user experience. The last thing I want for my dual 24" monitors is to be able to only use one window at a time. Having a messaging app take up the entire monitor is ridiculous. Hopefully they'll find a middle ground. Until user multi-tasking exists in Android I won't be using it for anything but my phone.

vezzy-fnord3• 11 years ago

I advise against the use of the term "multitasking" to mean anything other than OS/unit of schedulable work multitasking, which is the proper meaning. The same happened to "real-time", and generally having technical terms with concrete meanings be watered down isn't preferable. Multiple workspaces is really what Android lacks.

ScottBurson• 11 years ago

I agree. This problem is growing exponentially.

threatofrain2• 11 years ago

Multitasking is used in multiple contexts now. Commercials and consumers use it to talk about Android and iOS features. It's too late to try and claim such a generally useful word like "multitasking" as a keyword.

notjoedimaggio• 11 years ago

Would be really interesting to see some serious productivity studies done on this. Not to pick on you -- I appreciate you insight -- but humans don't do multi-tasking well.

I wonder (and have no idea, just throwing the idea out there), if people would be more productive in that single tasking environment.

truncate• 11 years ago

For me its not just about multitasking. Its about distraction. With one window per app on a big screen (eg Windows 8), its just too distracting to switch. I have to go to application switcher, choose appropriate window, and everything looks different now. However, if I've typical two windows side by side of even overlapping, the switch very less distracting...and of course quicker.

That said, I do use a tiling window manager on my 13" laptop for work. I mostly use full-screen mode, but it works well for me, because switching is very fast.

kps3• 11 years ago

   > humans don't do multi-tasking well

Human ‘tasks’ and computer ‘tasks’ are not the same thing. A productive ‘task’ for me, at work or at home, typically involves concurrently using one or more editors (text, graphic, schematic, …), one or more documentation readers (web browser, PDF viewer, …), and one or more communications tools (email, IRC, hangouts, …).

adrianbg• 11 years ago

Android and ChromeOS embody pragmatism and idealism. Android does everything everyone needs it to do but it's rotten on the inside because the focus is always on shipping. ChromeOS is a great vision for the future of detached computing but no one uses it because the vision hasn't been fully realized. I've been wondering whether this was going to happen ever since Chrome tabs on Android became equal citizens with the other apps. Seems like another good move from Google.

jordanthoms4• 11 years ago

Seems everyone here is panicking because they think that this means Chrome OS will be killed and Android will be made to run on Chromebooks - but I actually think the signs point to the opposite - Chrome OS becoming the Phone/Tablet OS under a new guise. I wouldn't read too much into a leak filtered through journalists, and instead look at what Google's actually working on:

- Google has Chromium developers working on a DART-based Mobile UI framework and execution engine, Flutter (http://flutter.io/). It's looking to be far better than the existing Android UI system - built for touch and 120fps from the start. This uses the Dartium VM and a bridge to allow the DART apps to use all the native features of the platform, it's much more than just another web framework. Development on this is very active right now, clearly a sizable team working fulltime - and they're building new developer tools also. There was a talk on this a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnIWl33YMwA .

- Google has built a Runtime to allow existing Android Java-based apps to run on Chrome OS, and is currently testing this and working with developers to get their apps to run on it. It doesn't make much sense to invest in building that out just for chromebooks, since the experience on a Chromebook with Android apps is pretty awful (can't resize etc), but it makes total sense if it's going to be how legacy Java/Android apps run on the new Chrome based phone OS.

The sad truth is that Android simply isn't a very well engineered system - it's been improved over time, but problems persist - like the complex update process leading to unsatisfied users and security problems, poor UI performance (even now, Android can barely do simple animations at a steady 60fps on the latest Nexus devices, and has little hope of allowing for the beautiful animations the Material Design team has come up with), and poor battery life. Google's also at a dead-end with Java given the ongoing legal battles, and with Apache Harmony dead they have to maintain the standard library implementation themselves.

On the other hand, Chrome OS performs great, has awesome battery life on Chromebooks, is quite possibly the most secure end-user OS ever, and Chromebooks get speedy updates for at least 5 years. I know which one I'd choose as the basis for a merged OS.

glibgil• 11 years ago

Interesting. Well, it's all getting folding into Android now.

jessaustin5• 11 years ago

Yes it's interesting to note that this is all coming from non-tech media interpreting the CEO's comments. The CEO is never gonna say "Android is dead and replaced by ChromeOS", just because of relative market shares. No need to piss off customers and partners. In two years when we realize what's going on, he'll just say that we misunderstood him. In the meantime, if no one closer to the coalface fleshes out the details of this supposed transition, the story will seem less and less likely.

on_and_off2• 11 years ago

AFAIK Sky is a project of the Dart team without any link with the Android team. It is an interesting idea but right now it is little more than a proof of concept. Even the demonstration app is extremely underwhelming.

jordanthoms4• 11 years ago

Sky (which is renamed Flutter now) is developing fast though and is clearly a well-resourced project. Certainly fits with a preview next year and 2017 release timeframe. It could be one of several projects competing though.

mda• 11 years ago

Yes, exactly, there are silent projects like Mojo (https://github.com/domokit/mojo), Flutter, Mandoline (https://www.chromium.org/developers/mandoline) that whispers actually android is being folded into Chrome. Time will tell.

toptalentscout• 11 years ago

Seeing Android on PCs would be cool. It runs on top of Linux, it would pretty much do away with all current Desktop Linux variants I'm guessing. I could be missing something since I can't read the full story, it requires me to create an account or sign in. It might even give Windows a run for its money, heck I'd finally have a real reason to make and sell Android apps since I can actually read the fonts on my desktop "PC".

ionised3• 11 years ago

Android on a desktop wouldn't do away with all the distros that float around because they all attempt to address different problems and audiences.

If anything it would be probably treated like Ubuntu, an easily accessible, user-friendly distro.

aws_ls• 11 years ago

I could be missing something since I can't read the full story, it requires me to create an account or sign in

You can search for the title in Google search and click on the link from there, you will get to see the full story. Long live SEO!

patrickaljord• 11 years ago

Update 7:40PM: We've updated the article's headline to be more accurate. A Google spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that both Chrome OS and Android will continue to exist; Chrome OS is not being "killed."

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-combining-...

bobajeff• 11 years ago

So... they aren't going to focus more on Android-based laptops and rebrand Chromebooks to something without Chrome in the name?

Because otherwise I'd just completely utterly ignore any and all Chromebooks since it'd be effectively obsolete and probably unsupported as soon as 2017 Rolls around.

BinaryIdiot• 11 years ago

People are really up in arms about this but keep in mind this is something that won't ship until 2017; the Android you know today won't simply have ChromeOS running as an "app"; it'll be deeply integrated and they'll likely address the multitasking issues they have today (2 years is a long time in technology terms).

I'll save any criticisms I have for when I actually know what the ultimate combination looks like.

ausjke• 11 years ago

Android is really getting bloated these days, my nexus7 becomes nearly unusable these days(the launcher is not responding, etc), haven't used chromeOS.

I recently bought a netbook(ACER) for $190 that I loaded with Linux and does everything I need, really why do I need ChromeOS?

Both ChromeOS and Android are OSes, it's like two Linux distributions, I don't know why they should "merge", what's the benefit for doing that? is it merge-able considering Android is such a JVM-hack?

JoshuaJB• 11 years ago

This makes me sad. I used ChromeOS as my daily driver for over a year, and it worked beautifully. Always secure, always up to date. The available fast and elegant SSH and IRC clients combined with Google Drive alone covered most of my daily necessity.

I only stopped using ChromeOS because Microsoft hired me and gave me a computer that cost 5x as much. Google did an admirable job in optimizing for low-end hardware, but there is a point where you can only eek so much out of a dual-core ARM with 2Gb of RAM.

On the other hand, my android phone (which cost the same as the chromebook) regularly struggles to load the homescreen.

hendry• 11 years ago

The operating system I work on https://webconverger.com/ I feel is just as secure as Chrome OS.

It self updates once installed (you can also downgrade if needed!) and we also have the entire rootfs in https://github.com/webconverger/webc for easy review. We https://webconverger.org/wireshark/ official Firefox releases to ensure it doesn't chat to third parties.

https://webconverger.org/blog/2015/ChromeOS_versus_Webconver...

realrocker• 11 years ago

Merging Chrome OS with Android means that now it will have access to the humongous ecosystem of App Developers, Platform Engineers, OEM's, ODM's, cheap ARM chipsets, a gazillion of tiny hack shops across China, Taiwan and India and test labs. And more in the form of an established brand name.

Android is bent and tested in unthinkable ways due to its reach. Let's see if Chrome OS is up to it.

sandGorgon• 11 years ago

finally. This is something which is obvious and had to happen someday. The challenge is to take core components in Android and Linux (systemd vs android init or kdbus vs binder) and merge them together. Interestingly, this summer there was a student project layering binder API on kdbus [1]

I personally believe that SteamOS jumped the gun by not taking a bold step in this direction. It would have tapped into a even bigger developer community, accelerated the adoption of Vulkan and would have moved towards a larger Linux mindshare. It would have been an awesome world where most android apps could run on my desktop and my desktop has drivers that works with all graphics cards.

[1] https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2015/ocw/proposals/3417

meerita• 11 years ago

I would love to fully switch from Mac to Android if Google releases a solid, fast, secure and full of software OS. Sketch, Adobe, Sublime for Android along with Material Design UI looks promising.

javadi82• 11 years ago

Paul Buchheit predicted this in 2010 to happen in 2011.

Reference: http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/gmail-creator-paul-buchheit...

ionised3• 11 years ago

What is Chrome OS like in terms of phoning home to Google? Is it Windows 10 bad?

Diagnostics, usage telemetry, advertising, tracking etc.?

I've never used ChromeOS and I'm more concerned about these things potentially making into stock Android (more than is already there now anyway).

thebouv• 11 years ago

Mostly concerned about schools who use them for students. A full blown Windows machine is going to be so much more of a maintenance nightmare for the school. Feature-light is a good thing, especially for elementary and middle school age students.

eli3• 11 years ago

I really hope a robust community steps up to continue it as an open source project.

Google to Fold Chrome Operating System into Android

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