Why Hasn’t Google Put ChromeOS Out to Pasture?

Google has been on a killing spree the last few months, whacking projects that are non-essential to the company strategy or that haven’t caught on. Even though this has angered some users, Google is still stubbornly clinging to one of its biggest dogs to date: ChromeOS and the Chromebooks.

Google announced the ChromeOS in July 2009, and finally started shipping them to consumers in June of this year. (Not counting Cr-48s, which weren’t commercially available.)

While Google has been extremely successful with the Chrome browser, it seems home users and businesses are much less enthusiastic about an operating system based on the browser. According to a recent report in The Register Chromebook sales are “unlikely to exceed 30,000 units.”

To compare, Google claims 500,000 Android devices activated every day. Clearly, Chromebook sales leave a lot to be desired.

Why Chromebooks Didn’t Take Off
It’s not really hard to see why Chromebooks haven’t taken off. ChromeOS is a nifty operating system, but it’s just not competitive with Windows or Mac OS X, or really even with iOS or Android. Web applications only take you so far, and a device that always needs a connection is problematic.

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