[owaislone]

Yes, this is more like it. Most likely it was someone's 20% project (if it still exists) and someone higher up the command saw some potential in it and gave them more resources. Google can afford it. At worst, it can fail, at best it can give Google a technologically superior OS. Plus, they can always use parts of it or lessons learned from it elsewhere.

There is also no reason they can't replace Linux underneath Chrome OS with new Foundations. After all Linux internals were never exposed to the consumers in Chrome OS. As long as they port Chrome, they should be able to do it at least theoretically. Same theory could apply to Android but that would be much harder to do I think.