[coldtea]

Yes, they sell decently, but do no represent any profit for Google (which gives the OS for free).

It's around 5-6 million units sold anually, but, as Google themselves said, Google don't make any money of off them.

Samsung, Acer, etc, who produce the units do, but again, in total it represents a tiny slither of laptop profits due to the small margins. Most Chromebooks (70%) go to the education market as cheapo laptops.

[jaredsohn]

I would imagine that Google indirectly profits by having more users using Google as their default search engine and by encouraging the world to rely more on the web.

Edit: Also, in the past Google would pay Firefox to have its users use Google as the default search engine and Google gets the equivalent of this for free with each Chromebook sold.

[noelsusman]

If direct profit generation is the measure of failure for Google then they've failed at basically everything except for advertising.

[coldtea]

Even taking indirect advertising profit into question, they've failed at basically everything.

E.g. with all the billions developing Android, buying Motorola etc, they still make the large majority of mobile ad money on iOS devices!

[gozo]

Yes?

They suffer from the gulf state problem where they make so much money from one thing that nothing else will ever be important enough to really be successful.

[bduerst]

Thankfully revenue streams are more complex than just, "Did we make more money than it cost to produce this unit sold?" in a vacuum.

It's 2015 and companies compete for user timeshare, not dollars.