[JustSomeNobody]

What game is this changing, really?

[ja27]

Touchscreen support. For example, I use Zinio to read magazines. The webapp can't zoom, doesn't handle portrait mode well, and is pretty bad with touch. Actually it's pretty broken in general. But the Android app runs great on my Chromebook and has a good fullscreen touch UI.

Similar with something like Google Play Books. The Android app has a good fullscreen touch UI and has a notes feature that the webapp doesn't.

[kakarotoismygod]

Having offline apps is game changing because not everyone has access to the Internet all day long, and doing tasks like image and video editing on your laptop will be much easier and faster than using web services.

[NetStrikeForce]

So, like having a Mac or Windows laptop, but restricted to either webapps or walled garden.

This is not game changer. It is exciting and might help grow the Android ecosystem. I just hope Google learned from the Honeycomb fiasco.

[VikingCoder]

You can side-load Android Apps on Android.

I'd be pretty surprised if you won't be able to side-load Android apps on ChromeOS.

[benley]

You can already side-load Android apps on ChromeOS, as well as with Chrome on other platforms. All you need is the ArcWelder chrome extension, which I'm pretty sure is provided by google themselves, to package up an apk into a chrome app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc-welder/emfinbm...

[elliotpage]

But chromebooks already have lots of offline apps? They have been available for the majority of the Chromebooks' lifespan at this point.

[JustSomeNobody]

Sorry, not trying to be argumentative but this doesn't change the game.

It's cool, but not game changing.

[proyb2]

If it's get too affordable with a low-end hardware, most users will still opt for LAN cafe which is popular in China and some countries and is cheapest option for gaming and surfing Internet.

The cheapest notebook is about US$200.

[rpdillon]

It's a pretty huge deal, at least in my eyes. Chromebooks have this enormous following because of the price. Now, every app in the Play Store is installable to this huge group of laptop users. That means when a company wants their app to be on Android, they consent to it being on laptops as well. This means Microsoft Office and Apple Music are on ChromeOS laptops. It's a very effective strategy to vastly increase the viability of Chromebooks for regular users using other companies' apps. I never expected to see Apple developing apps for a Google-controlled laptop OS, but here we are.

[discordance]

Perhaps not game changing, but it is interesting to look at the overall 'universal' app trend between Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft's UWP platform - for Microsoft it's about bringing users from their strong desktop market to Windows Phone.

Google - Android apps on Chrome OS. Google seem to be doing the opposite of Microsoft and making a play for the desktop market.

Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Seems like Microsoft and Google are directly competing here, and Apple is competing with themselves.

[pantypants]

>Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Is this what the relatively recent bitcode stuff with iOS apps is for?

[Kiro]

Literally? Hearthstone. You can now play Hearthstone on a Chromebook.