[ProdNITI] Chromebook

CHROMEBOOK

ProdNITI VOL. 1 | ISSUE 1

JUNE'20

About

ProdNITI is an initiative about deconstructing technology products around us and presenting them in a simple and easy-to-follow language.

The objective is to filter the most important dimensions and relevant market-linked aspects of a product, to understand its motive and intrinsic consumer value, and to finally top-it up with our own analysis of its performance and the possible future.

We aim to move away from the conventional methodology of product research to engage our readers irrespective of their technical knowledge and background.

Authors

Gaurav Mishra (x20gauravm@iima.ac.in) Krupesh Ved (x20krupeshv@iima.ac.in) Shubham Rao (x20shubhamr@iima.ac.in) Suyash Agrawal (x20suyasha@iima.ac.in)

Click to reach out to us!

Be like a Cool Kid

PAGE 1 Imagine yourself as the intelligent kid on the block who is always up-to-date with the latest stuff going around in the world. Now imagine having two friends, one an athlete winning hearts at the local stadium and another one mesmerizing everyone else around with a melodious voice. Do you find yourself jealous? No? Good for you, but note that most of the kids around the world sure do. And those jealous kids in one way or another do try to give a shot at practicing on their own to develop such other "cool" talents. Many even achieve success in doing so and emerge out as an all-rounder.

Now, this ain't a report on parenting advice or even psychology of the kids.

But such ambitious practices do play out in the market as well. Competition brings out the best in everyone, and this old adage is just not limited to humans.

The first decade of this century was dominated by two great companies in the consumer electronic market of PCs (and even in the enterprise to a large extent). Yes, you got them right in your head - Microsoft and Apple. While Microsoft partnered with OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to glue the employees of the world to its Windows software, Apple made significant strides by launching standalone devices (not devices, but beauties if you're into romanticism) for rescuing the same glued employees at home.

On the sidelines of this battle, a cool company named Google was known for its nerdy talent of answering your

sentences loaded with interrogative pronouns. Totally free of cost! It remains the best with answers even today. However, a kid known for answering all the questions around isn't recognized as "the cool kid" in the playground!

After pioneering internet-search, Google continued with its plans to help the world in "organizing and sharing information easily" (the cliché phrase to throw at your investors for seed funding). To do so seamlessly, Google recognized that the browsers of gone by era, namely Internet Explorer and Firefox, relied heavily on technologies segregated into different silos and loosely coupled with each other. As the nerdy kid on the block, Google came up with a plan to let the kids of the neighborhood know how much more it was capable of than just answering the 'I'm feeling lucky' questions. It decided to create its own browser. And Chrome was born!

"Simplify things" While we are unsure when Jobs rubbed his shoulder with Eric at Google, simplifying the browser interface was accomplished very well by the engineers. Google Chrome, when launched, brought its own rendering engine (and continues to date). The fastest one, all written from scratch.

We don't have to talk about Internet Explorer (Nope - Don't recall those days). Netscape was a savior, but it had its own qualms. It functioned in its old mindset. So, when Firefox was born out of Netscape, not much changed in terms of overall usability. What Google Chrome provided was a breath of fresh air in the playground.

PAGE 2 Are we going to talk about browser wars now? No, but we have to tell you why the launch of Chrome as a browser created space for an inflection point in Google's thinking trajectory. By the year 2007, Google already had a plethora of products in its bag. Its mission statement remained the same - "We serve our users by developing products that let them more quickly and easily find, create, organize, and share information. We place a premium on products that matter to many people and can improve their lives. " Most of those products fulfilled its mission statement and helped Google outrun every other search engine. Ads contributed to 98% of the overall revenue. All its applications enabled the advertisers to outreach possible customers in several ways. And Google continued to load advertisers' guns with more of its ammo. One new application was called Google Toolbar.

Once installed, it brought all the applications of Google within a clicks' reach for its users. It didn't matter if you were using a Windows or a Mac. You could have the toolbar enabled in any browser of your choice. Let us quote Google here -"For companies, universities, and government agencies, Google also offers the Google Toolbar for Enterprise and Google Desktop for Enterprise. Google Toolbar gives employees a search box in the browser and the ability."Did you notice it? That's the tone of "premium offering" for enterprises. It was about going beyond daily-use customers.

(Now trust your brain in telling you that this story is already turning

interesting) Google Chrome was launched in September 2008. With the kind of simplicity it offered, the usage of the browser started increasing across users with varying tastes in no time. Chrome was already an interface to Google's world. Notably, the company also gathered diagnostic data from its browser users to "help improve the usability of the browser you love".

Sure, many of you disable this option right after installing any software nowadays, but probably you wouldn't, had you just got access to the internet in the 2008-09 era with a simple-touse Chrome browser. All the apps already developed by that time Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Google Earth, Blogger, Finance, etc. were right at your fingertips. Just open the browser, and you will find the Google logo up and running. You don't even have to type "www.google.com".

You're right in thinking that such simplicity makes sense for many first time users of the internet.

Undoubtedly, a majority of the population even continues to have that Google-Search button as their home on the browser. But, before the playground recognized this new-cool-kid, Google already had made bigger plans to run far ahead of everyone. Chrome brought another concept of beautiful websites.

With its advanced rendering engine, it gave web developers capabilities to think beyond static HTML/CSS websites.

It brought the idea of simplified web applications. It also provided Google with a path to guide the development of web apps in a manner to benefit its

PAGE 3 own set of products that were already following modern-website design frameworks (such as Google docs and Gmail). It used the bandwagon effect to increase the platforms' reach. In the words of the 'Master G' from the year 2008: "Schools and businesses are increasingly moving towards web-based applications and away from licensed software. Since web-based applications require a minimal up-front investment, businesses can pay as they use them and download updates."

(We hope that you're with us on this chronological turn of events.)

Google realized well ahead of everyone that it need not limit itself to answering stupid questions on the web.

It can do so much more and actually launch end-user products. By enabling standalone web applications on Chrome, it saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Students and businesses could benefit more by only caring about accessing the internet and leaving

everything else for others to worry about.

"Pay as you go" with a minimal upfront investment business model was not new, and Google thought of bringing a fundamental change in the PC market using the same. Don't own a PC. Only worry about accessing the internet, about seeking answers, about creating, organizing, and sharing information. It was time for Google, thinking far ahead in the coming years, to launch its own operating system. To be also recognized as an equal to Microsoft and Apple on their turf. Even in doing so, Google wasn't thinking of deviating from its core advertising market. Hell, it was actually planning to expand its reach for more data. It started to recognize the real oil of this century - 'Data'.

Let's look at our graph 1 now:

Graph 1

PAGE 4 Notice the increase in Chrome usage and plateauing usage of other browsers right after Chrome's launch in the market. Google's vision to simplify internet access and make the web an exciting place embodied the first principles of remaining the moat in the search-engine space. Chrome as an interface increased its viability to not be dethroned any soon. And as a next step, the Chrome OS operating system was conjured in secrecy. Let's read this in Google's own words: "Google Chrome OS is an open-source operating system for users who spend most of their time on the web. Google Chrome OS is built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity, and security. Google is working with several original equipment manufacturers to bring computers running Google Chrome OS to users in 2010."

bringing in an operating system for its users. By having students and businesses as its target customers, Google created the funnel marketing campaign for any of its future services/platforms. For affordability, it partnered with OEMs to build a complete end-to-end solution called "CHROMEBOOK".

(So many words to reach up to this point? We believe any protagonist deserves a grand opening) That's how Chromebook was born.

We can't help ourselves from finishing the section in the giant's own words, once again: "Chromebooks are computers that are built for the way people work and live today.

Chromebooks, like the Chrome browser, are built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity, and security. Chrome has made browsing the web simpler, speedier, and safer for more than 750 million users worldwide."

It was always about gathering more data. The required fuel to continue marching on ahead of everyone else.

The company gave another seamless interface to its evolving ecosystem by

Pic 1

Hello World!

PAGE 5

Unlike the Chrome browser that was left out in the playground as a free-touse product, the cool kid had to sell Chromebook and devise a profitable business model around it. In a tough neighbourhood, this ain’t an easy task.

Everyone else already had an up-andrunning toy store, but the kid had few interesting strategies to play out: How to launch a product that will increase the usage of Chrome OS and push the users to use Chrome Browser for every other common use case?

It’s simple – Just leverage the existing user base. Since there were 160m users of its Chrome browser, Google had to come up with a product that can leverage this user base, creating a new market for it. And, That’s what happened. As mentioned earlier, Google came up with an end-to-end solution called Chromebook, a mini-laptop cum tablet with Chrome OS in it.

The first commercially available Chromebooks were unveiled at the Google I/O Developer Conference in 2011 and henceforth were available to be bought at online channels such as Amazon, Best Buy, Dixons, etc.

Did online selling work? What could be the reason behind selling Chromebooks online? How the strategy evolved?

The reason to launch a product that is creating a NEW market was to reach out to all the existing Chrome users at once. Also, it could have been the case that a new market product won’t pick up offline.

To tackle the low online sales, Google launched another program called ‘Chromebooks for Business and Education’, allowing businesses and educational institutions to pay Google a monthly fee in exchange for a

Do you know?

Google used Umbrella Branding to make Chromebooks easily identifiable as the huge customer base of Chrome will be able to connect with it instantly. It also helped them capitalize on the existing ‘Confirmation bias’ of the Chrome users. Preference to Chrome over others will most likely only strengthen the consumer's pre-existing preference, causing them to have a positive opinion of this new product ‘Chromebooks’!

PAGE 6 supported, updated Chromebook.

Business users will pay $28 a month for each Chromebook and educational institutions will pay $20 a month per unit for a 3-year contract.

One of the primary advantages is security i.e. the ability to keep the systems Spywares free since the systems don’t run on a traditional Operating System and also take advantage of Google-powered security measures! (Recall those scary days when users used to install unauthorized software, ending up with a Trojan Horse on their systems 😨)

devices in a comical manner. For example, when the question "How do you backup a Chromebook" is asked, it is implied to refer to data backup, but instead, shows two hands pushing a Chromebook back to the end of a table.

This is followed by the statement, "You don't have to back up a Chromebook," showing how all data is stored on the web!

Goodies will do more good than bad!

Also, Google focused its marketing efforts on hands-on-experience— It gave away Samsung Chromebooks to Cr-48 pilot program participants along with the title Chromebook Guru and lent Chromebooks to passengers on some Virgin America flights.

Did the marketing stop here? Nope. The more, the merrier!

Along with providing the hands-onexperience, Google launched the ‘Chrome Zone’, a “store within a store” inside the Currys and PC World superstore in London. The store had a Google-style look and feel with splashes of color all around the retail storefront. The concept was later changed to a broader in-store Google shop.

In addition to these marketing strategies, Google Chrome has created several mini-advertisements called "Chromebook minis" that demonstrate the ease of use and simplicity of the

Can freebies or goodies attract users to buy ones’ product? Absolutely.

Who doesn’t like free stuff! With the launch of its new ARM-powered Chromebook in 2012, Google offered two years of 100 GB Google Drive storage and 12 Gogo in-air Wi-Fi passes for free. Over the years, Google has not just continued to offer this perk with the name ‘Google One’, but also started offering other perks in the form of limited-period licenses to premium apps on the purchase of a new Chromebook.

PAGE 7 Did the change in strategy work? Let’s shift our focus to some numbers to get an idea!

Yes, the evolving marketing strategies worked in Google’s favor!

During the first 11 months in 2012, Chromebooks sold 400,000 units and had a negligible market share, but from January to November 2013, 1.76 million Chromebooks were sold in the US, representing 21% of the US commercial business-to-business laptop market. In 2015, Chromebooks, by sales volume (to companies in the US) found a spot after Windows-based devices (with Android tablets, overtaking Apple's devices in 2014). By March 2018, Chromebooks made up 60% of computers purchased by schools in the United States. In the year 2019, 20 million Chromebooks, equivalent to 11 times the 2013 units, were sold!

Are Chromebooks becoming popular among the users?

more

The demand for Chromebooks has been surging over the years. There are many factors that have led to increasing interest. First, the expanding support in the form of ever-evolving features by collaborating with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to target the enterprise sector is raising the bar high.

Second, Google has rightly recognized that the education sector has played a major role in increasing the popularity of Chromebooks. Hence, the education sector has been a priority for years now.

BUT, are these two the primary reasons for increasing adoption?

No. There is another factor that has paid off after facing initial hiccups. It’s none other than the addition of

Graph 2

PAGE 8 ‘Android apps’ on Chrome OS. The growing popularity among consumers to use their favorite apps on the large screen of Chromebooks (compared to that of smartphones) has also pushed the developers to work extensively on enhancing the experience. From 2018 to 2019, Android usage on Chrome OS has increased 4X, indicating the shift in popularity in favor of Chromebooks.

Also, along with the consumer demand, the launch of Linux (Beta) on Chrome OS attracted the developers. It allowed the Android developers to build, test, and deploy apps easily with a Chromebook.

Hence, it is crystal clear that ‘The Chromebook’ is here to stay for a long time!

Can we convert our monitor (display) into a desktop (personal computer) with Chrome OS? Yes. We can do it using Google Chromebit!

The Chromebit is a dongle running on Google's Chrome OS operating system. When placed in the HDMI port of a television or a monitor, this device turns that display into a personal computer.

Chromebit allows adding a keyboard or mouse over Bluetooth or via the USB port

Any dime in my Piggy Bank?

PAGE 9 Operating a new shop incurs expenses and Google is well aware of it. The purpose of most product launches for a company is to earn money. Nothing different for Google, but before counting the dimes coming through Chromebook, we have to answer a few questions for you:

When we conventionally talk of data in communication terms, it is nothing but strings of 1s and 0s. However, the evolution and depth of technology have allowed companies to attach monetary values to this data and extract $$ in return for running their businesses.

For Facebook, one way it makes money is based on the “photos you share, likes you click and active posts you follow in your friend circle”. This enables them to accomplish targeted marketing where their platforms serve as entry points or mediums for converting an ad to a click and eventually into a final purchase.

For Google, its user worth is based on the volume of searches one has conducted in the past 60 days from the specific browser and device one is using at the time - with the notion that the more you search, the more likely you are to be clicking on an ad at some point. This advertising revenue makes up more than 80% of Google’s total revenues.

Let us understand how companies like FB and Google value user data.

Data shows that the average user yields $34.46 for Facebook in the US. For

How does a company value your data?

Graph 3

PAGE 10 Google, the ARPU (average revenue per user) depends on the searches a user makes using Google’s powerful search engine. Talking of 2019 numbers, Google made $163.9 Billion in revenue and had about 2.2 Billion people searching on its engine. This gives us an ARPU of $75 per user. So next time you use these websites, keep an idea of how your searches and actions are translating into revenue for these companies.

moment.

As per sources, Google’s total profits in 2019 were close to $34 Billion and revenues $163 Billion. This is almost triple the numbers of 2012 so it's quite an achievement for the Tech Giant to achieve a 3x growth in a matter of 7 years. Advertising made up 82% of the revenue or close to $134 Billion for 2019. In this regard, the chrome browser has been pivotal for advertising, drawing in 80% of the advertisements or close to $107.2 Billion.

Of this figure, Google earns $50 per user through Chrome. Really?

(Let’s play with some answer this question)

numbers

Chrome is also the leading browser in the world (62% share) and if we assume 3.5 Billion people in the world use web browsers, then we would have 2.1 Billion active users on Chrome.

to

Our analysis started by browsing some reliable sources which talk about Google’s financials in 2012 and 2019.

We have particularly picked these two years since 2011 is when Chromebooks were launched and 2019 is the most recent year, hence this way we can see the growth of Chromebook over the years from launch to the present

This leads us to a strong conclusion that chrome as a vertical draws in about “$50 of revenue per user” to Google or close to “67% of the total ARPU”. So now you can convince yourself about the importance of Chrome to Google!

Graph 4

PAGE 11

Coming to Chromebook, where does it fit in?

Data reveals that Chromebooks sales have picked up in the past 3-4 years.

According to statistica, close to 20 million Chromebooks were sold last year.

Now, this is not at all a bad number considering 166 million laptops sold in the year, so Chromebook gets a good “12% share of it”. This opens up different streams of revenues for Google as seen below: Advertising Stream The Chromebook is instrumental in binding users to the Chrome browser and thereby brings in additional advertising revenue. Considering our previous figure of $50 per Chrome user in ad revenues, we estimate close to $1 Billion of advertising revenue brought in from the Chromebook on an annual basis.

Subscription Model We saw in the previous sections how Google Chromebook has made a huge impact in classrooms and in educational institutes. They offer the product as a subscription model where an amount close to $25-$30 is charged from each user per month. If we assume 60% of total chrome users to be these school children, we find an incremental revenue of $340 million for Google YoY.

G-Suite Revenue We all are well aware of the GSuite product offering for Google cloud-based services and applications.

This is another bundled service that exists as part of the Chromebook offering. More Chromebook users would subscribe to this product and hence we assume it is another vertical that opens up a distribution channel for Google. Though G-Suite is offered at different prices in different countries as per different plans, averaging the prices shows an average revenue of $4 per user per month. Considering the business users of G-Suite (the student population is ignored since G-Suite is free for schools) to be ~6 million, we can conclude this brings is incremental $288 million of revenue for Google YoY from sales of Chromebook.

App Revenues One of the motives of Google to offer the Chromebook was to allow school kids to understand a simple OS and leverage the power of App development. Post-2016, Google also allowed ‘android App downloads’ and usage on its Chromebooks. If we assume 1 out of 100 kids would use this feature to develop his own App on this platform and later the App makes

PAGE 12 its way to the App Store, this opens up a new segment for users and developers to thrive on Google’s Market. Considering the average downloads of an App to be 2500 and the average price of downloading an App to be ~$5, we can say Chromebooks as a medium brings an additional $500 million of revenue to Google from the sale of these applications on its Play Store.

way in which it has achieved its targets.

In addition, we can understand the importance of Chromebook to Google is not about OS like it is for Microsoft Windows or Apple OS. Instead, Google has a far-sighted vision in drawing customers to its ecosystem, thereby generating loyalty and user trust.

While Chromebooks’ outputs and benefits do not find a way directly in Google’s 10-K filings or financial statements, the above report serves as an informative breakdown to understand the numbers and intrinsic value of this product to the company. If we simply look into the numbers, the pricing, performance and penetration of Chromebook appear limited. However, this report tries to go behind the scenes to understand the companies purpose in offering this product and we can say it is successful with its product and vision.

So what are the takeaways?

With the above breakout, we observe the different ‘channels of growth’ that the Chromebook opens up for Google.

While these values are still a small percentage of revenues to Google’s overall sales, one cannot deny the monetary value of increments that these bring in. Together we saw the Chromebook numbers grow from 2012 to 2019 by almost ‘60x’ in a period of 7 years. These numbers are great for any company and can easily convince the reader of the importance of Chromebook to Google and the subtle

Graph 5

PAGE 13

The lacklustre APAC numbers!

Past data shows that the APAC region has always been a critical area of growth for electronic hardware companies.

The

presence

of

China

and

other

developing countries in this region would mean huge hardware sales than anywhere else in the world. Still, Chromebook has hardly picked up sales in this region.

According to sources, Chromebook merely had 3.5% market penetration by the year 2016. Why did this happen?

Where’s my 24x7 connectivity? - The Internet in India is yet to reach every pocket. Though telecom operators such as Jio have pulled the prices down, the network congestions and last mile connectivity problem is yet to be solved.

Endowment Effect - “My Windows breaks. Yes, I know.

But, I’ve mastered all the error codes over the years”.

Traditional PC users don’t want to climb another learning curve by adopting a pure service oriented solution such as a Chromebook. The inertia is huge and may require aggressive marketing strategies by Google. This incentive driven strategy (cashbacks made you use GPay) must be already brewing in a lab unbeknownst to us.

Infrastructure Debt - Most admin departments have already invested in virtual OS solutions or in new server racks. Recognising the investment as sunk cost to adopt a cheaper solution like Chromebook will continue to remain a tough decision to make.

New Horizons

PAGE 14 After reading Jobs' biography and the launch of the iPod in 2001, you can simply wonder why another MP3 player of the century. And then you read more to realise Jobs' real intentions. It was not introducing another MP3 player per se. It was a step towards formalising the music industry by launching iTunes.

Giving the artists and media companies their share of the revenue from the content they're publishing for consumption. Then it all made sense to first launch a hardware device that's going to work seamlessly once plugged into a MAC running iTunes.

Google accordingly learnt and tried to foresee the future. People will simply lose interest in the hardware and the operating systems of the devices. They will primarily care about solutions and services.

This is the kind of future we are now almost living in. It is this kind of future where Google is taking its Chromebook.

You stop caring about hardware and what runs inside the hood. Boot up your device in a few seconds and open a tab on a browser. The world is at your disposal to offer its relevant services.

Think about it. Isn't that the kind of activity you actually end up performing mostly on your laptop?

Clearing the clutter Chromebook started with a simple design of a web browser and then came the app ecosystem - Chrome apps, Android apps, Progressive web apps ( PWAs), Linux apps. In the year 2016, when Google had already planned internally to streamline the application gateways it was offering, the decision was taken to start supporting Android apps on Chromebook.

The announcement was made to kill Chrome apps by 2022. Android apps were launched in the year 2017 and ‘eventually’ started working for everyone.

The ‘Googlification’ of the classroom!

Google makes $30 per device by selling management services for the millions of Chromebooks that ship to schools. But by habituating students to its offerings at a young age, Google obtains something much more valuable. “If you get someone on your operating system early, then you get that loyalty early, and potentially for life,” said Mike Fisher, an education technology analyst at Futuresource Consulting, a research company

PAGE 15 The first time users of Google ecosystem can get off their work from an app on Chromebook and continue it on their mobile devices.

cloud. Launch Lucidpress, and it might be all you need for print design. Try Gravit Designer instead of Illustrator.

Again...think services.

Offering Services.

It's FOSS As per reports from Google, I/O developers are now encouraged to make android apps compatible with Chromebook.

If you want more attention on your apps, think Chromebook.

Go Platform Agnostic.

Think Services.

Usage of android apps quadrupled in 2018 (that's the latest number we could get). The Product Manager at Google, Sweet Song, reported the increase in time-spent in-app to order of twelve-fold and a double rise of paid conversations for the sketching tool concept among Chromebook users.

Google also teamed up with Gameloft to help them in optimising Asphalt 8, and the end results were astounding.

The Barcelona based game-studio recorded a nine-fold increase in the overall revenue of their Android-tablet version of Asphalt-8. This is also the reason why Google decided to drop a bomb on its Android-based tablets. The vision was far ahead in establishing a unique synergy - a single gateway. The goal had shifted to merge tablet and laptop users into one consumer.

You like Photoshop? Or a decent Video editor? Try Polarr instead of Photoshop (it's not the same but offers pretty good filters at your disposal). Play with Audiotool for crafting new music on the

We can now add Linux to the list. The announcement of "Project Crostini" in the developer conference of May 2019 was dismissed by the open-source community right away. Then few users picked it up to try it out, and the project got a welcome acceptance.

Linux apps worked on most of the Chromebook devices.

Once Linuxsupport is enabled from preferences, you can install open-office, libreoffice, your daily editor GIMP and many more apps. With the addition of a GPU, full-intensive standalone apps can work seamlessly on a Chromebook. Chrome OS is now seen as the ocean for merging streams of different operating systems.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of Android, Chrome, Chrome OS and Play (so pretty much all the gears of the machinery) made it clear in a "Fireside Chat" that the company is "continuing to invest" in the future development of Chrome OS. Simply, because it has a REAL SHOT. In Lockheimer's own words "Chrome OS is a really interesting operating system for the future of computing." Unlike Windows or macOS it has "advantage of being developed in the modern age". So Chromebook is only about to mature more with time.

But...but what about my Games?

PAGE 16 One word. STADIA. The four prime factors on which Chrome OS functions are security statelessness, stability and speed. With Chromebook, Google wants you to forget about assembling a rig of a graphics card and a cooling system, OR for that matter buy a hefty DELL Alienware.

Not required.

Open a Chrome browser and play. Just like that.

With STADIA, Google is offering cloud gaming service right off the box. Buy a game as you do, pay a subscription fee for the platform and most importantly sit tight with a high-speed internet connection. Then simply open your relatively cheap Chromebook, launch a tab and play your favourite game. The browser engine will optimise the latency, graphics behind the stadia platform for you. There's more. You can simply shut your laptop, plug in the stadia controller to your mobile device and continue the game on the move.

It's an exciting market Google is now looking at. Another revenue stream that Chromebook has supposedly opened up for the company. The XBOX division at Microsoft has already rolled up its sleeves to beef up its own cloud gaming services. Our point is once the technology matures, all that you will end up paying is for the cost of your high-speed internet connection. No more worry about an outdated GPU or those heating cables around the heat sink. The technology isn't there yet as per the recent usability reports. Still, with the kind of vision Google has framed, we think it will reach there.

Downside Lingers Not everyone is on board in this clutter-free idea of services. It's hard to shed your habit of using fullyfunctional self-contained offline applications on Windows / MAC / Linux.

We know your ease of using MS office.

We have it too, but the office apps of Google totally seem to work fine for

Do you know?

In the year 2013, Microsoft used its ‘Scroogled’ campaign to attack the Chromebooks, showing that “when you're not connected, the Chromebook is pretty much a brick”. Although it was a weak and desperate attack from MS, it did affect the consumer’s perception about Chromebooks being less secure (Allegations of user data being stored) than Microsoft’s offerings.

PAGE 17 the Linux enthusiast in our team.

Chromebook also no longer lags in providing hardware resources to you if you really care about it. The latest lineup is costly and can present itself as a reasonable alternative to your existing machine. Such a combination makes media-editing and media-creation easy peasy. Then we have Android games too.

Nevertheless, the downside of less customer conversion from other platforms lingers.

Maybe Google doesn't care for now. It has its eyes on the future generation of users. Those who are already habituated to only care about the services they're using.

Nothing more. So it's sorted in Google's own mind.

Our Nutshell

From one of Eric interviews: "So I think we're going to go from the sort of commandand-control interfaces where you tell the computer, like a dog, "Bark," to a situation where the computer becomes much more of a friend. And, a friend in the sense that the computer says, "Well, we kind of know what you care about." And again, you've given it permission to do this. And it says, "Well, maybe you should do this," or, "Maybe you should do that."

He's talking about the symbiotic relationship between computers and humans. We thought why this wasn't explicitly pitched in the marketing Chromebook. We realise a simple pitch won't have helped the world to grasp such an imagination back then.

We're closing in on the symbiotic relationship. Chromebook is one of the steps towards it.

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