I never understood why Chrome OS had to be different from Android. I've also never had a Chrome OS device, maybe that's why I simply don't get it, but can anybody shed light on the differences?
As noted, an Android laptop was in the works. I think an Android laptop with Chrome browser, with extension support, would've been the holy grail. But Sundar Pichai wanted to protect his Chrome OS project, so when he took over Android, he killed that project. (And yes, I can dig up a reference to this, if anyone questions it.)
Chrome OS and Android may seem similar from a distance – they’re technically similar and do similar things, but they have very different goals.
Android was trying to imitate iOS and needed to establish itself and survive in a harsh market environment. It needed to be flashy, appeal to elitists, be affordable enough for the „poorer“ market segments, foster an economy around „apps“, etc. The result was an unholy monstrosity that, nevertheless, managed to beat iOS (on market share) as it was supposed to.
Chrome OS instead was an attempt at reducing a computer as much as possible to being just an interface to the internet – merely a technical artefact required to interface with the digital world, since humans don’t happen to have WiFi built in. Sort of like Google Glass, but envisioned in a world were smartphones did not yet exist. Market concerns and technical viability were secondary. The result was something that functionality-wise works as well as current technology allows, but nevertheless is the only laptop out there that truly „just works“. If anything actually ever breaks, you can go to the store, buy another one and have it work exactly the same like your old one – just type in your login credentials and everything’s back to where you left it.
I agree that in a perfect world both these „things“ should be achievable by only one product, but, reality being the mess hat it is, lead to Google developing two different products and now painfully trying to converge them into only one as much as possible.
Android is a odd one. Google bought it, and until recently it pretty much acted as a separate fief to Google.
Chrome(OS) on the other hand was, i think, started as one employee's personal project. Likely based on a observation that many of us spend our days mainly using a web browser, with the rest of the OS sitting idle around it.
I've always felt that in concept, Chrome OS belonged on phones and Android on laptops. Think about it -- Chrome OS really needs an always-connected device, which is a phone, whereas Android runs all apps locally (except apps which have a sole purpose of getting online such as web browsers).
