Google Appears To Be Working On Bringing Android Apps to Chrome OS

The Wall Street Journal reported late last year that Google plans to merge Chrome OS and Android. The search giant, at the time, had refuted such claims while adding that it continues to work on "bringing together" the best of both operating systems. It appears, one such step is adding the Google Play (Android's marquee app store) to Chrome OS. Several users are reporting that they have seen an option -- "Enable Android apps to run on your Chromebook" -- which would understandably allow them to run mobile apps on the desktop platform. Unfortunately, the feature isn't working just yet. Bolstering this theory is another such instance in the source code, which says "over a million apps and games on Google Play" will be made available to Chromebook users.

A report on Ars Technica speculates this move as the demise of Chrome Web Store, the marketplace for extensions and themes for Chrome, which hasn't received any significant improvement or feature in years. At any rate, the timing of this discovery is interesting as Google's developer conference -- I/O -- is just around the corner (May 18-22).

Comments

Re:No benefit to Chrome OS

[MightyYar]

Well, that and people with IOS seem more willing to spend money for apps. Which makes sense, since except for the few "flagship" Android phones, most are very inexpensive.

(I'm cheap, so I generally have an Android. I can't justify $600-700 for something that is, for me, a toy that has a sketchy phone built-in.)