I'm willing to bet money that: While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there's no plan to phase out

I'm willing to bet money that: While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there's no plan to phase out Chrome OS Comes from a worry about chromebook sales, not any presence or lack of a technical plan to merge or combine components from the two. I would bet this is actually: 'YES, we are merging something with something technically, we're just going to keep two brands for now'. For all the reasons in the other thread, it's both good and bad in different ways; but I would be astonished if you don't see wide support for Android apps on chromebooks in the near future; and that does require some kind of Android runtime.