Android chief squashes rumors of Android merging with Chrome OS

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 13 Dec 2016

If you were holding out hope that Android Chrome would one day merge into some kind of super OS that marries the desktop mobile worlds once for all, ’s senior vice president for Android, Chrome, Chromecast Hiroshi ckheimer has some bad news for you: It’s not happening.

Speaking on the l About Android podcast, the mobile chief threw a giant bucket of cold water on the idea that the two platforms would eventually converge, despite recent rumors that suggest such a project is already in development at . “There’s no point in merging them,” ckheimer said, pointing out sales of that Chromebooks overtook Macs in the first quarter of this year. “They’re both successful.”

But that’s not to say the two platforms will stay entirely separate. You can already run Android apps on some Chromebooks ( more are on the way), ckheimer extolled the strategy of sharing features, saying ’s aim is “to make sure that both sides benefit from each other. … You’ll see a lot more of that happening, where we’re cross-pollinating, but not a merge.”

The impact on you at home: ’re all waiting for that magical all-in-one device to arrive that lets us seamlessly bounce between apps devices without skipping a beat, but forcing two distinct OSes together isn’t the right way to do it. Much like Apple has done with iOS OS X, there are plenty of ways that Chrome Android can integrate with each other to create a better experience on both sides. But is right to keep them separate. There may be a day when releases an OS that can scale to all of our devices do it all, but it will likely be a ground-up rethinking, not a hybrid.