Google says Chrome OS “is here to stay”

Wall Street Journal had reported on October 29th, 2015 that Google would be merging Android and Chrome OS sometime early 2017. Now Google has tried to refute this claim and has tried this issue head on. Google responded on this rumour in an official statement made at the Chrome OS blog by Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast.

Hiroshi was very clear to mention that Chrome OS is stay and that "there's no plan to phase out Chrome OS". He mentioned that about 1.43 million Android applications can now run on Chrome OS using the Apps Runtime on Chrome (a.k.a ARC). To prove this point further, he elaborated on the upcoming features Google is working on for Chrome OS. Some of the new features include a new media player for Chrome OS, a visual UI refresh based on Material Design, increased focus on security and privacy features, performances improvements etc. He even confirmed new Chrome model releases in 2016.

This shows the amount of effort Google is dedicating towards Chrome OS.

Chrome OS launchpad screenshot

"Every school day, some 30,000 new Chromebooks (laptops running Chrome OS) are activated in U.S. classrooms that’s more than all other education devices combined," said the blog post.

An interesting point to note is that Wall Street Journals story by Alistair Barr mentioned the unification of Chrome OS with Android sometime in 2017. Google's blog post only commented on Chrome OS's future in 2016. There was no comment about the plans for 2017. So we will have to keep an eye out on Android N, Google's next release for its popular smartphone OS Android, and the Google I/O in calender year 2016 when Android N is assumed to be announced.

Posted by George Daniels on Monday November 02 2015, 8:35 PM EST. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Technology. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0