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."

Comments

Forced convergence is all the rage.

[symbolset]

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.

Re:Forced convergence is all the rage.

[hairyfeet]

Which is frankly bumming me the hell out, this is the first time since i got into tech in the late 70s that I have thought the future is actually gonna be shittier than what we have now. before things always got better, systems got faster, prices went lower, the generations were just better and better...now? Its fucking game consoles man, that is ALL it is, fucking locked down game consoles in phone or tablet or whatever form and the public eats that shit up because it means they don't have to think because there is no thought involved with a game console, mommy corp takes care of everything so don't you worry your pretty little head none. They'll tell you what to buy, when to buy a new one, it'll all be controlled and as user friendly as a TV remote and just as worthless for anything not approved by corporate.

Its fucking depressing man, you got Google building DBs on everybody that would make the Stasi jealous, you got Apple seeing how locked down they can make a device and still get the public to buy, and you got MSFT being Apple's bitch and copying every bad feature of Apple without any good, the whole thing fucking stinks.

Re:Forced convergence is all the rage.

[wed128]

I'll have what he's having.

The OS should match the hardware

[xyzio]

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.

Re:The OS should match the hardware

[drinkypoo]

Chrome and Android are very different OS.

Chrome is a browser, and Android is an operating system. Linux is a kernel, and it is the basis for both Android, and ChromeOS, a lightweight Linux distribution intended to present an interface to the user only through the Chrome browser.

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.

You do not even know what a minicomputer is, so please don't use that word again until you consult a computing dictionary. Android does not run on minicomputers, and it barely runs on microcomputers. It's intended to run on handheld computing platforms, but one day it should be a dandy operating system for microcomputers as well. (Right now, the hardware support is lacking.) It has no problems supporting a mouse and keyboard interface, which has been true since Gingerbread at the latest — which was delivered with the Acer Aspire One AOD250 netbook, which is an example of a microcomputer.

Combining them is going to give you something like Win 8 - neither one nor the other but a giant mess.

Chrome for Android already exists, which permits you to combine Chrome with Android by installing an APK. It is crap compared to the version of Chrome for microcomputers, which is why ChromeOS even exists. Otherwise, it would make absolutely no sense for Google to maintain two Linux-based operating systems (Android and ChromeOS) due to duplication of effort. When and if Chrome for Android reaches feature-parity with Chrome for ChromeOS, then not only will there be no further reason for ChromeOS to exist, but we will also be able to say that Google has "merged" Android and ChromeOS, since the entire interface of ChromeOS is the Chrome browser.

I admit that for there to be no reason for ChromeOS to exist any longer, that Android will have to be able to run on the equivalent of the highest-end Chromebook shipping at the time, but almost regardless of the details that will be a minor implementation hurdle compared to bringing Chrome for Android up to speed.

Tell it to Mozillla

[colfer]

Tell it to Mozilla. All resources seem to be going to the OS project. Thunderbird lost funding.

Linked article has little to say on the issue

[grouchomarxist]

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.

Re:Linked article has little to say on the issue

[roc97007]

More overlap is fine. The back end could be virtually identical (probably is already very similar) and developers would benefit. As long as they don't try to force us to use the android touch interface on non-touch chromebooks, we're golden.

Google appears to understand that presentation is a layer atop a collection of resources. Presentation is not the OS

Re:Linked article has little to say on the issue

[samkass]

Is the summary really implying Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, is stupid for suggesting that the two OS's will probably merge someday?

Duh!

[mordejai]

Of course they won't MERGE. 3 years from now, tops, Chrome OS will be more dead than Google Reader.

Agree

[roc97007]

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...

Re:Agree

[sconeu]

Or to make the browser an integral part of the OS....

Browser

[markdavis]

I think Chrome and Android have already merged. Chrome is the default browser in Android Linux, now.

Oh, perhaps they meant "Chrome OS" Linux?

Re:It's not as crazy as you think...

[kllrnohj]

I was always confused why chrome wasn't the default preinstalled browser on android. Google developed the same thing twice?

You seem to have forgotten your history here. Chrome and Android launched around the same time. Hell, Chrome on Linux didn't show up until 2010 - that's *AFTER* the Motorola Droid had launched. It's obvious *NOW* that Chrome should run on Android. But 3-4 years ago both Chrome *and* Android were far from proven, and both were focused on establishing themselves first.

Also, how you build a browser on a desktop is very different from how you build one on mobile. And the vast majority of the work is bringing webkit up on a new platform. WebKit by itself doesn't do much - it's basically "just" HTML parsing + DOM management + JavaScript. Graphics, audio, video, etc... is all platform-specific, and when Android was starting out webkit didn't support touch either.