Today marks 15 years since the first Chromebooks hit the market. Google partnered with Acer and Samsung to get a range of devices ready for the big launch day in 2011. While the platform has gone on to enjoy enviable success in the education market, it continues to be sidelined in mainstream and premium markets, despite the best efforts of Google and partners.
Google’s vision in 2011 was to “make computing simpler and more accessible for everyone.” It arrived with this goal at the tail end of the netbook era, where there was a proliferation of cheap Windows thin and light designs that were infamous for becoming tragically slow in a short time. Some might describe the first Chromebooks as cloud-first evolutions of netbooks – and they indeed made much better use of limited hardware with fast boot times, browser-based workflows, and everything done in the cloud, easing the demands on the (typically) anemic hardware.
Mainstream and premium laptop users, perhaps stung by netbook experiences, have never warmed to Chromebooks, though. Google and partners have invested in high-end product development across several generations, to no avail. Chromebooks seem to be firmly entrenched in K-12 education computing, and can’t escape from that niche.
We’d probably conclude that Google Chromebooks missed their chance in the early 20-teens by holding back some of the best initiatives we are seeing on the platform now. For example, it took until 2016 for the Google Play Store to arrive on Chromebooks, in 2018 Linux app support was added, it took until 2019 for Steam gaming support (beta, recently killed though) to arrive, and until 2021 for ChromeOS Flex to be released to install on out-of-support old PCs and Macs, and only in 2023 did Google decide to ensure new Chromebooks got a decent (10 years) length of OS support. Google could have gone all-in with its best features earlier on, instead of wasting time and resources on the ridiculously expensive Pixelbook (2017), for example.
Nevertheless, as noted above, Chromebooks are now an undeniable success in the education segment. In K-12, the platform still looks unassailable due to a number of factors. Probably the most important features in its favor in this segment are the platform’s lower costs, centralized management, and ruggedized options available.
Chromebooks have also earned a reputation for reliability and security. Research suggests the platform requires fewer tech support calls than rival computing platforms. Last but not least, the recent change to a 10-year device updates support guarantee should cement the Chromebook platform’s good reputation.
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