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The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Google is finally killing off Chrome OS in favor of Android. This prompted Google to backpedal a little too vigorously, with Android/Chome OS engineering head Hiroshi Lockheimer sounding like he just went out and bought two Chromebooks to make a point.

But the Journal's point is sound. Chrome OS is just the latest iteration of the eternal IT dream of thin-client computing, which only ever really works in strictly controlled contexts like corporate campuses and schools. You need to assume ubiquitous connectivity, and you need to know your core apps will be available on the thin-client platform. While Chrome OS works offline, in a bolted-on way, it works less well offline than every other possible option for mobile computing.

Over the past five years, we've only been moving away from a Web-centric experience, especially in mobile. The one-size-fits-all window of a Web browser has been trumped by the speed and efficiency of hybrid Web views in mobile apps. Facebook and Twitter are trying to pull news articles and videos off other websites and into their walled gardens, where they get pre-cached and displayed much quicker as apps than in a browser window. HTTP and HTML aren't going away, but they're getting more outlets that don't involve a window with a URL. Google acknowledged this last year by making moves to bring Android apps to Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is very successful in education—Re/Code says it has 72 percent of the market right now. Notice that Google's Lockheimer said he bought Chromebooks for his kids' studies, not to look up IMDb in the living room. Chrome OS' strengths and weaknesses versus Android are tailor-made for schools. Chrome OS is much more secure and less flexible than Android, and school administrators don't want kids running adware-laden apps willy-nilly. So it's likely that Chrome OS could remain a niche product for education.

But consumers, mostly, don't care about Chrome OS' security advantages over Android. Consumer Android devices in the U.S. aren't frequently hacked, because they usually aren't rooted and they get all their apps from the Play Store. We hear a lot about potential exploits here in the U.S., but very little about actual devices being hijacked. Android Marshmallow has made some good moves towards on-device security with secure boot and mandatory encryption, and Android Nutella (whoops, I mean Android N) will probably improve things further.

How Android Must Evolve

Google can't reduce its focus on Chrome OS quite yet because Android Marshmallow isn't ready to take up the slack. The Android/Chrome OS distinction is really an interface gap, one with which all major OS providers have struggled. It's the difference between laptop-style, keyboard-and-trackpad input and finger-friendly, touch-centric input, with a dash of "how big a screen is this supposed to be on?" thrown in.

Microsoft solves the problem by having one OS that flips between desktop and tiled modes. Apple calls the problem unsolvable and just has two OSes.

A few years ago, Google experimented with a range of Android-powered laptops and desktops, but they foundered in part because the Android interface looked worked weird in those form factors. Popping open a word-processing window on the HP Slate 21 desktop, for instance, defaulted to ridiculously gigantic fonts. That's part of why the company came up with Chrome OS in the first place. At the moment, the Pixel C keeps the dream alive and acts as a kind of placeholder for future Android-powered laptops and convertibles.

App developers have been adapting to laptop-sized Android interfaces for a few years now, as they've gotten used to including tablet modes in their apps. The real gap is in making sure the apps users download work with a laptop-style interface, or making it so users don't see and aren't tempted to download apps that don't work in a keyboard-and-trackpad context.

Expect Android N, released in fall 2016, to include further security improvements as well as APIs and guidelines for desktop and laptop form factors. Only then will we officially start hearing about reducing the focus on Chrome.