Ten years ago, Google announced the first commercial Chromebooks at Google I / O 2011: the Samsung Series 5 and the Acer AC700.
To give you an idea of how long it has been, the company also announced a new version of Android at the event, which will be known as the Ice Cream Sandwich. It also launched a music streaming service called Google Music Beta, which eventually became Google Play Music (RIP).
The start of the first commercial Chromebooks did not go very smoothly, at least from a critical point of view. One reviewer called the Acer AC700 “essentially a large netbook” while another reviewer called the Samsung Series 5 “essentially a browser with a keyboard”.
Connected: The best touchscreen Chromebooks you can buy
The idea of a Chromebook – a cheaper laptop that relied entirely on an internet connection and cloud services – seemed too contradicting both critics and consumers at the time. The registry In late 2011 there was even an article entitled “Chromebooks: The 2011 Flop?”
Imagine how shocked these people would have been if you told them Chromebooks would outbid macOS-based computers in the US by 2016. Would you even believe that over 60% of all mobile computing hardware purchased in educational institutions today is Chromebooks?
You would probably have been laughed from around the room.
Google relies heavily on the Chromebook
In 2006, Googler Kan Liu developed Windows apps for the company. He was frustrated with how overly complicated the operating system is and how that overcomplication affects the user experience.
Over the next several years, Liu and other Googlers developed Chrome OS in-house. It was designed as an internet-based operating system that starts up in seconds and runs flawlessly on low-end hardware. The development mantra seemed to be, “Keep it simple.” In fact, the team initially focused on removing as many settings, menus, and features as possible without affecting the average user experience.
The first Chromebook was not available for sale and was used solely as a platform for testing Chrome OS.
In December 2010, Google introduced the CR-48 laptop shown above. The completely black, unbranded rubber machine was bulky, ugly, and under-challenged. It was only available as a prototype that was only made available to early testers to play with on Chrome OS.
At his unveiling, Sundar Pichai famously said, “The hardware only exists to test the software.”
Connected: Dark mode for Chrome OS: how to enable it
When the first commercial Chromebooks arrived in 2011, critics and consumers were not thrilled. The biggest complaint was the fact that the laptops were too expensive. On the AC700, it started at $ 350 – that’s over $ 400 in cash in 2021. When it comes down to it, it makes sense: why pay $ 400 for a laptop that can’t run any of the Windows or Mac programs you need (or at least think you need to be)?
Despite these early setbacks, Google was determined to get Chromebooks working. In one of the smartest moves the company has taken, it led Chromebooks into a heavily neglected segment of the market: the classroom.
Success came slowly, but it did
After a while, what initially stalled Chromebooks – how restrictive they were by only letting you do basic things – became their greatest strength. Because Chromebooks were so straightforward, educational institutions saw them as a system that was easy to maintain and cheap to buy.
Google saw this as an opportunity and started working that angle. OEMs have been pushed to make Chromebooks that work well specifically in the classroom. That meant making them durable, light, simple, and overall inexpensive.
From 2012 to 2017, Chromebooks engulfed the education market from rivals Apple and Microsoft.
By 2012, Chromebooks made up 5% of mobile classroom products in the United States. That’s not bad at all for just a year of existence. However, by 2017 Chromebooks made up just under 60% of the same market.
This incredibly rapid growth took competitors by surprise. Apple’s market share in education declined 33% over the same period, while Microsoft’s declined 21%.
Connected: From PCs to Macs and Chromebooks: The Best Laptops for Students
Since Chromebooks do well in schools, it was only a matter of time before they performed well with general consumers. When parents bought Chromebooks for their children and then found that they themselves enjoyed the simplicity and ease of using one, sales soared.
According to StatCounter, Chrome OS now has an overall market share of just under 7% in the US. That’s an incredible amount when you consider that the operating system didn’t even have a commercial product 10 years ago.
The success of the Chromebook will only increase
Chrome OS was eventually expanded and can now run both Linux apps and Android apps. This opened up the possibility for Chromebooks to do just about anything a standard PC can.
However, a low-power Chromebook still cannot replace a high-performance PC. Or can it?
Cloud computing is now the next frontier. We have already seen this future in the games industry with Game Pass Ultimate from Microsoft, GeForce Now from Nvidia and Google’s own Stadia. With these cloud gaming services, gamers can only play AAA titles with a browser. Powerful servers take over the workload of running the game and stream it to a user’s computer over the Internet.
Why buy a $ 1,000 Windows laptop when a $ 200 Chromebook and monthly cloud PC service subscription can do it all?
With these services, a person on the cheapest Chromebook can play the latest game titles at 1080p / 60fps. No longer do gamers have to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars building a PC rig or buying the latest expensive console. The playing field is leveled.
Cloud gaming is just the beginning. Soon pretty much everything you do on a computer will be processed in the cloud and streamed to your device, be it over your broadband at home or your future 5G service on the go. You don’t need an expensive graphics card to render video edits or a powerful processor to compute complicated strings of code. Instead, you need a browser.
Connected: The best budget Chromebooks: more diamond than raw
This will undoubtedly fundamentally change the way we view personal computing. There will be people in developing countries learning how to use a computer with a Chromebook and there will be professionals who have long relied on Windows to switch to Chrome OS when they find their $ 1,000 laptop is over the top.
Google has played the long game with Chrome OS, and its efforts are only just beginning to bear fruit. Chromebooks are likely to be viewed as one of the company’s crowning glories in a few years.
