
Google to Fold Chrome Operating System into Android - sanatgersappa
http://www.wsj.com/articles/alphabets-google-to-fold-chrome-operating-system-into-android-1446151134
======
rdl
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.

~~~
cwyers
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.

~~~
joosters
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.

~~~
cwyers
> ChromeOS can do most of the tasks that an everyday Internet user might want.

That's damning with faint praise, isn't it? It can, at this point, do MOST of
what an everyday Internet user might want? It's that whole 80/20 thing that
everyone thought would let somebody overthrow Microsoft Office -- 80% of users
only use 20% of the features. Well that's true and all, but it's not the same
20% for everyone, and you only have to miss one feature to make a Chromebook
an untenable alternative to a Windows machine. There was a brief window where
Chromebooks were significantly cheaper than a comparable Windows laptop but
Intel took the ARM threat seriously, Microsoft took the licensing seriously
and now the base Chromebook price from a name manufacturer isn't significantly
cheaper than the HP Stream or what have you. "Most" is not going to cut it now
that the price advantage is gone.

> There are lots of people who are content with its restrictions.

This is really only true in that we live on a planet with many, many lots of
people, and so you can find lots of people for which almost anything holds
true if you funnel it down. ChromeOS market share is a rounding error at this
point, and if there were any signs that this was turning around, Google
apparently decided they weren't enough for them to continue.

~~~
mwcampbell
Agreed. About a month and a half ago, my grandfather asked me for
recommendations on a new computer. I asked him what he needed to do on his
computer, and it was looking like a Chromebook (or in his case, more likely a
Chromebox) would be perfect, until he mentioned that he runs Quicken. And my
mother (an accountant) was emphatic that Quicken Online was no substitute.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Also in agreement. 1% of the use can make 99% of the difference.

~~~
sireat
And the worst part is that last 1% is different for 99% of people. ;)

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html)

------
Periodic
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-fnord
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
I agree. This problem is growing exponentially.

~~~
pzone
I see what you did there.

------
jordanthoms
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/](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](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.

~~~
on_and_off
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.

~~~
jordanthoms
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.

------
patrickaljord
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-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-combining-
android-chromeos-report)

~~~
bobajeff
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.

------
AdmiralAsshat
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.

~~~
bduerst
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).

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

~~~
bduerst
Yeah, it doesn't do regex find and replace, and crumbles under large files.

------
blinkingled
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.

~~~
bad_user
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?

~~~
amyjess
> 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.

~~~
bad_user
I think there are multiple problems with that vision.

For one you're assuming that current computing capacity is enough for most
people. However current computing capacity is enough only for current
applications of it. In a decade from now however people are going to get
interested in virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It's inevitable.
Plus the gaming industry, just like the housing industry, has always sucked
all surplus.

And there are hard limits to how small transistors can get, or to how fast
wireless networks can be. But problematic are also the batteries, for which
Moore's law never applied. Only 5 years ago I was using a phone whose battery
lasted for at least 7 days. How about your current phone?

Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still
handicapped by its small screen real-estate. The form factor of a laptop is
optimized for productivity work while remaining portable. A physical keyboard
is more productive than typing things on a touch screen. A 13-inch screen is
more comfortable than a 4.7 inch screen for doing any kind of productivity
work. I can go to a coffee shop, pull out my 13-inch laptop and instantly be
productive. And transporting around a dock, a keyboard and a monitor to plug-
in your phone in case you need it would be more impractical and would defeat
the purpose of that phone.

I concede that there will be people interested in using their phone as a
general computing device. Those will be the same people that are doing that
today, as in the people that lack the resources to buy multiple devices. A
very important and probably big market, but still.

~~~
scholia
> Another problem is that no matter how powerful a phone can be, it's still
> handicapped by its small screen real-estate.

With Windows Continuum, you plug an external monitor and a keyboard into your
Windows 10 Phone. You get a desktop style experience on the big screen but you
can continue to do phone stuff on the phone.

BUILD 2015 Continuum session - Windows Phone as a PC
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdzbXo38onQ)

It becomes significantly interesting for the odd 4 billion people who will own
a smartphone one day but may never own a laptop.

Toshiba tried something similar with a PocketPC (powered by Windows CE) a
couple of decades ago, but it didn't work well enough to go anywhere.

------
msoad
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
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.

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

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

~~~
frik
iOS is OSX under the hood, it's the same core OS kernel, just the userland is
different with a different API. The same goes for WatchOS.

The same can be said for Windows (7/8/10) and WinPhone8+ and XBox, all run a
Windows NT kernel with different userland and APIs.

And Android and ChromeOS have the same OS under the hood too, modified Linux
kernel with different userland.

------
cwyers
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.

~~~
e40
_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.

~~~
danieldk
_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.

~~~
e40
_Presumably, OS X 10.11.1 fixes some problems with Office 2016 when you are
running El Capitan._

I'm running 10.10.5, and that is a version of Mac OS X they support. So,
"fixed in 10.11" is not at all interesting to me.

------
pgrote
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_watson
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.

------
ChuckMcM
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.

------
jallmann
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.

------
shmerl
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
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
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](https://developer.android.com/tools/help/adb.html)

~~~
scintill76
Available on Ubuntu as android-tools-adb which installs fast, that's how you
know it's not JRE. :P You can also install a terminal emulator app if access
from PC is not a requirement for you.

------
zmmmmm
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.

~~~
bsimpson
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.

------
skoocda
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
Why not Ubuntu?

------
EvanPlaice
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
_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
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.

------
kozukumi
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
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_
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.

------
spinchange
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!)

------
billybilly1920
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.

~~~
bsimpson
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.

~~~
bduerst
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.

------
hardwaresofton
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.

------
comex
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.

------
ausjke
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?

------
realrocker
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.

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

~~~
crb
[https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en)

------
hendry
The operating system I work on
[https://webconverger.com/](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](https://github.com/webconverger/webc)
for easy review. We
[https://webconverger.org/wireshark/](https://webconverger.org/wireshark/)
official Firefox releases to ensure it doesn't chat to third parties.

[https://webconverger.org/blog/2015/ChromeOS_versus_Webconver...](https://webconverger.org/blog/2015/ChromeOS_versus_Webconverger/)

------
amyjess
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.

------
johansch
Ah, so Android won the fight.

~~~
pjmlp
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?!

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

~~~
pjmlp
I said that on purpose and maintain my statement.

That was nothing more than the Chrome team playing at building OSes.

------
arihant
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.

------
JoshuaJB
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.

------
mcintyre1994
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.

------
adrianbg
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.

------
fiatjaf
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!

~~~
optionalparens
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.

~~~
fiatjaf
Thank you.

------
BinaryIdiot
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.

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

------
sandGorgon
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](https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2015/ocw/proposals/3417)

------
javadi82
Paul Buchheit predicted this in 2010 to happen in 2011.

Reference: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/gmail-creator-paul-
buchheit...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/gmail-creator-paul-buchheit-
chrome-os-will-perish-or-merge-with-android/)

------
fiatjaf
[http://www.ubuntu.com/phone](http://www.ubuntu.com/phone)

------
ionised
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).

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

Not developers.

~~~
0xFFC
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.

~~~
jenscow
I couldn't disagree more.

I'm a developer, and personally have no interest in a Chromebook but there's
no way I'd recommend the types of machines I use to my mother. I'd use my
knowledge of computers to recommend something that's actually suited for _her_
use case - ie, Faceborg, email, downloading malware, etc.

I would also be swayed towards the computer that's easiest to maintain
(meaning less call-outs).

~~~
0xFFC
I think you misunderstood what was my point, my point wasn't that developer
suggests chromebook (I don't personally),My point was if chromebook would have
ordinary stuff (like you said) it was much superior influence on developers
(almost all of developers I know, would jump into linux base desktop if google
can provide perfect DE), because of google's open source background. the
influence neither microsoft or apple don't have.But sadly the are missing such
huge interest on market , just because of their ego, it took 7 years to
understand Google need a desktop operating system.if they do not provide
operating system, someone like microsoft and its smart ceo Nadalla would come
and steal whole their web based user base in long term.And effectively can
kill google.

p.s. look at how small was canonical. whole canonical investment on ubuntu is
something google can throw away.just for securing its user base.

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

~~~
pjmlp
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tablet_PC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tablet_PC)

------
thebouv
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.

------
meerita
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.

------
iMark
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

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

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

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

~~~
Oletros
Please, start

~~~
billybilly1920
They are still being sued by Oracle over the base the OS is built on.

~~~
blazespin
Lol, i love how this is at the bottom of the HN comments page. Sometimes HN
can be kinda clueless.

~~~
bdcravens
Not sure what the status of that lawsuit has to do with anything. It's not
like Google is going to admit defeat and stop moving forward based on a
lawsuit that isn't even resolved (which was dismissed once, only to be revived
via appeal). Worst case scenario is that Google will pay a damage and start
paying Oracle licensing fees for Android, the same way they pay Microsoft.

~~~
Oletros
Google doesn't pay Microsoft

~~~
bdcravens
You're correct - I believe it's the handset manufacturers that do

------
alexkavon
Fucking finally.

------
serge2k
Really don't want Android on a PC.

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

~~~
optionalparens
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.

~~~
ionised
I love PC gaming and I really dislike Windows.

I begrudgingly upgraded to Windows 10 because it will be the only OS with
DirectX 12 support.

However the absurd level of phoning home the OS does made me also build a new
machine running Debian, which I now use for all my work and general personal
computing.

My Windows machine is gaming/Steam focused only now. No cloud integration, no
Microsoft Account.

If 99% of games worked on Linux, or SteamOS makes good progress as a viable
replacement for Windows on a desktop I'll drop Windows in a heart beat.

I have zero attachment to it and the OS offers nothing I can't get elsewhere.
Except perhaps for Netflix, the Windows Store is a wasteland of terrible apps
that for the most part are worse than their Win32 counterparts.

~~~
optionalparens
I too hate the phoning home, so good point. I feel like apps in general,
whether on my phone, ps4, anything are trying to do this in some form or
another. I do not want improved recommendations, a "better" future experience,
or anything else. I do not want to contribute to your analytics meetings.

I agree the Windows store apps are also terrible. There are still quite a lot
of non-windows store exclusive apps that you might not use that work great on
windows. Likewise, there are various cross-platform apps that also work better
on windows.

In a second life, I've done quite a bit of side work in graphic design, music
production, and animation. Suffice to say that while Mac OS and later OSX were
dominant at times in these spaces, there were always periods where this was
not true. If anything, Apple seems pretty evil to these users in the last 5
years. I've had very little trouble with my apps in these areas on windows,
while on OSX my friends can't stop ranting about things that have happened to
Final Cut Pro, Logic, Garage Band, and other apps. I still use the
aforementioned and don't necessarily agree in all cases, but it is true for
some people. It may be bias or laziness on the dev, but reality is reality -
just the other day I got a new sound interface and it works much better on
Windows than OSX, and I use it on both for different tasks.

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

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

~~~
IgorPartola
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.

~~~
oxide
Viacom's Comedy Central doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

~~~
blockspiders
What about Viacomedy Central?

------
pjmlp
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

~~~
pjmlp
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.

------
toptalentscout
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".

~~~
aws_ls
> 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!

------
Zigurd
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.

~~~
bsimpson
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
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.

~~~
bsimpson
Except they announced it with Android. That's what's weird.

The commit logs make me think it will run Android OR ChromeOS, user's choice.
Maybe eventually the dual boot mode gets deprecated in favor of the converged
OS. But if they are planning to converge, building and releasing two software
stacks for the same device feels weird.

The more I write this, the more I wonder if they are somehow trying to get
both running on one device to make sure that the converged experience is at
least as good as both of the separate iterations its replacing. Still, that's
an inordinate amount of work when they already have both ChromeOS and Android
devices they could reference.

~~~
zmmmmm
I agree, I also can't work out what they were thinking when they announced it
like that. They've been completely silent about the Pixel-C since that day
despite saying it would ship before the end of the year. Even if they do ship
it, the OS is not ready without any multiwindow capability active yet. It
seems to me they decided to announce it very early for some reason and with
nothing else scheduled until I/O next year, the Android announcement was where
they could do that. Of course, they could hardly announce all the rest of the
story without tipping their hand, so they just said it would ship with
Android.

My only good theory is that they are actually quite worried about the
converged laptop / tablet space and pulled the Pixel-C forward as PR to
somehow counter Microsoft's announcements in that space which happened shortly
after. I still don't quite see what they achieved but I can imagine them doing
it just to make a statement.

