The Google Play store is coming to Chrome OS, and it's bringing every single Android app along with it. That means that every app that runs on Android—everything from Microsoft Word to Hearthstone to Firefox—will be able to run on Chrome OS without noticeable performance penalties. At least, you'll be able to run Android apps if you have a modern Chromebook.

Google has published a compatibility list for the feature, including both the small handful of systems that will be compatible with the early developer channel betas and a longer list of Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and Chromebases that will be supported later in 2016 as the stable version rolls out. That list doesn't include most Chromebooks more than two years old, which Google tells us is intentional; Android apps should be supported on all new Chromebooks going forward and older hardware going back to 2015 or late 2014, but hardware older than that isn't likely to run them.

The cutoff appears to be mostly age-based and not influenced by the system's OEM, capabilities, speed, price, or CPU architecture. The original Chromebook Pixel doesn't show up on the list, for instance, despite being a Google-made system with a touchscreen and faster hardware than many modern low-end Chromebooks. Many of these systems will continue to get regular Chrome OS updates for some time yet, since Google's Chrome OS End of Life policy guarantees updates for at least five years from a device's release date. And enterprising Chrome OS users may find some way to enable the feature unofficially. But at least for now, newer Chromebooks are going to have access to a whole pile of apps that older Chromebooks just can't use.