Google's strategy seems to be to get people to spend more time on the web so they can view and click on Google ads.
Which makes the strategy of coupling ChromeOS to specific hardware devices even more odd. Why not just offer it up to people to use? Give it away a la Ubuntu and see if people wholesale switch up? Heck, if it worked decently on old machines I might be able to get another couple years out of some of the unused computers I have lying around.
That'd get the eyeballs using those machines on the web and hopefully clicking on Google ads.
This present strategy (Chrome books) is obviously not doing it and seemed odd from the start -- and smells like mission creep to me.
The kind of people who install different OS's on computers they already own are more likely to actually need to use native apps and more likely to spend lots of time on the internet anyway. ChromeOS is better targeted at a lower end of the market.
ChromeOS is better targeted at a lower end of the market.
Which I agree with. It's too bad that $500-600 isn't the lower end of the market anymore. I can get a usable notebook for <$300 these days. To really make a case, they need to hit the $200-$300 segment for it to make any kind of sense.
At $600 bucks I can get an actually fairly decent Windows 7 laptop.
Which makes the strategy of coupling ChromeOS to specific hardware devices even more odd. Why not just offer it up to people to use? Give it away a la Ubuntu and see if people wholesale switch up? Heck, if it worked decently on old machines I might be able to get another couple years out of some of the unused computers I have lying around.
That'd get the eyeballs using those machines on the web and hopefully clicking on Google ads.
This present strategy (Chrome books) is obviously not doing it and seemed odd from the start -- and smells like mission creep to me.