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We Didn't Need Google's Schmidt To Tell Us Android and Chrome Wouldn't Merge
First time accepted submitter Steve Patterson writes "Thankfully, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has announced that 'Android and Chrome will remain separate.' Rumors that the products would be combined emerged last week when leadership of Android and Chrome were consolidated under Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai. Schmidt stated the obvious, but if you are a developer and you took the bait and thought the rumors might be true, you already read enough of Google Chrome or Google Android documentation before Schmidt's clarification and confirmed that consolidating the two products would be, well, stupid."
Obviously they're crazy. Putting the same mobile touch-based user interface on every phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, watch, games console, server and small appliance is the wave of the future.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Chrome and Android are very different OS. Chrome is designed to run off the web on lightweight hardware using a keyboard/mouse while Android has a touch interface and runs on essentially mini-computers and needs to be able run offline. Combining them is going to give you something like Win 8 - neither one nor the other but a giant mess.
Just because it's hard doesn't mean you shouldn't try, it means you should try harder!
They pop up and disappear like toadstools. Google is everything but stagnant.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Tell it to Mozilla. All resources seem to be going to the OS project. Thunderbird lost funding.
Parts of Chrome and Android have always shared code (namely WebKit and some glue), but now Android is shipping Chrome as the default browser. The weird overlap is between Chrome OS and Android. Chrome OS is just Linux and Chrome... both of which are part of Android.
The only bit of substance this article has is the quote from Eric Schmidt which is a partial quote which leaves out a very important bit. The fuller quote is: "Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products but could have more overlap ". When the article discusses Chrome it seems to be focused on Chrome the browser, not Chrome OS, which the linked Reuter's article properly does. The original article discusses the differences between Chrome and Android, but none of these differences preclude merging or otherwise combining the OSes. In particular, it is very possible that Google at some time will support running Android apps on Chrome OS or running Chrome OS apps on Android.
Now that every idiot with an internet connection considers themselves a master of politics, business and strategy, technology, and usually also psychology.
Trolling only works properly because of this.
Of course they won't MERGE. 3 years from now, tops, Chrome OS will be more dead than Google Reader.
This the same Eric who tried the say "Google Now" was submitted to Apples App Store and Apple was holding it up..... then it turned out that was FUD ?
OK, Got it... trust is important.
Great so now / doesn't even need any real news, as long as it's from google.
Of course Android and Chrome won't merge. No company would be suicidal enough to try to create a single GUI paradigm intended to run on both a laptop and a touch screen appliance.
Wait...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think Chrome and Android have already merged. Chrome is the default browser in Android Linux, now.
Oh, perhaps they meant "Chrome OS" Linux?
Since when did "stupid" stop anyone?
> Schmidt's clarification confirmed that consolidating the two products would be, well, stupid.
That consolidation was exactly what Microsoft did with Windows and Explorer, and later with Vista and DirectX. Now look at Windows declining marketshare with fewer Windows applications. Too stupid to learn from their mistakes Microsoft are repeating the Vista disaster by withholding DirectX 11 from Windows 7, thinking if they keep DirectX 11 from it then everyone will upgrade to Windows 8. They haven't. OpenGL is the graphics system used on Android and iPhones. It has replaced DirectX as the future of graphics. Microsoft arrogantly consolidated platforms and paid the price when consumers wouldn't take their baggage. Google is wise to let each platform live or die on its own merits.
Is Slashdot berating Schmidt or thanking him?
"We Didn't Need Google's Schmidt To Tell Us Android and Chrome Wouldn't Merge"
"Thankfully, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has announced"
No-one thought Android and ChromeOS would 'merge' at a low level- classic strawman rubbish on Slashdot. The 'merge' that is both expected and needed has Android moving fully to notebooks and desktops, and the cloud services that ChromeOS currently provides becoming services that run under Android instead.
Google knows users want this. On the other hand, ChromeOS is the ultimate spy system, and gives Google the perfect 'control freak' computer OS. Chromebooks are currently doing very well, and there is little enough from Google's new projects divisions you can say that about.
Of course, users would settle for versions of Chromebook that can be properly rooted and converted to Android. The situation comes to a head later this year and onwards when really powerful ARM SoC parts start to become commonplace. Linux is doing a truly lousy job at replacing Windows, and the best of current Linux is x86 centric. The rise of ARM is a golden opportunity for the dominance of Windows to be finally ended, and Android is the perfect candidate to achieve this. However, Google's reputation for screwing up excellent opportunities is legendary.
If Google chooses to waste another year without properly backing desktop Android, initiatives like Valve's Steambox may finally force Linux to get its act together, and produce the the dominant consumer ARM desktop OS.
Well, duh, but I'm sure Schmidt felt very self-satisfied at answering that question.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You know when I said you should market the fuck out of /. to get profits and keep the lights on? How you could put ads over the top, down the side and over the foot and I was good with that? I was sincere about that. The previous owners didn't make the most of what they had. You're entitled to make money and there's a lot of opportunity here. I pay to be a member and then let the ads show up anyway. When the ads are pertinent to my interests I click on them, and sometimes I spend money.
But if you guys want to put popovers on here, or floating ads that obscure the content, then fuck you. We're not going to put up with that. You need to fix this shit post haste.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Schmidt stated the obvious, but if you are a developer and you took the bait and thought the rumors might be true, you already read enough of Google Chrome or Google Android documentation before Schmidt's clarification and confirmed that consolidating the two products would be, well, stupid.
As a developer, obviously I've read both the Chrome and Android documentation, as well as the Windows, OS-X, Linux, i-OS, FireFox and Safari documentation. It's a wonder I get any development done at all.
So to me it just seems incredibly obvious the utter and total stupidity of consolidating an OS, one of whose primary purposes it is to display websites with a webbrowser, whose primary purpose it is to display websites.
It's almost as stupid as Windows trying to integrate Internet Explorer or OS-X integrating Safari.
What's next? integrating web technology into the desktop? Don't be silly!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Have you noticed Samsung Kies app installed on all models (except Google phones)? It has disable keylock permission and cannot be uninstalled. Apparently if you have Kies installed on your PC you can unlock any Samsung phone that has Kies over USB without having to know the screen lock or the Google password.
Schmidt stated the obvious, but if you are a developer and you took the bait and thought the rumors might be true, you already read enough of Google Chrome or Google Android documentation before Schmidt's clarification and confirmed that consolidating the two products would be, well, stupid."
Yes. Developers who read documentaiton may have known it. Mangers however may get excited on the idea that they understand the world know that everything is open source and linux.
man can't have sex with a woman unless a woman also has sex with a man. So an 8% difference in male vs female butt fucking means either 1. There's a lot of man-on-man butt sex -or-2. There's a lot of men lying.
Or 3. the anally inclined women have had 1.08 male partners, on average.
We didn't need Slashdot to tell us We Didn't Need Google's Schmidt To Tell Us Android and Chrome Wouldn't Merge
Android has taken it on the chin from a security perspective, even though most of that relates to poor user choices. Chrome OS has some interesting and significant security-related architecture and implementation in place. I'm very sure that one fertile area of cross-pollination will be to port the kernel and configuration changes in Chrome OS into the Android environment.
Cross-pollination in the opposite direction? Harder to see, other than the ability to run Android apps on Chrome OS (which isn't really a merging of features).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Android and Chrome teams: "We think it would be good to merge our two codebases. It would make development easier, Android is almost a superset of Chrome already anyway, and would give us a larger base of apps and app developers."
Schmidt: "No, you can't do that! I PROMISED people that the two wouldn't get merged."
Yeah, right.
Why is this under "apple.slashdot.org"?