I don't understand why this is confusing anyone. There is a certain segment of the Internet populace that is interested only in browsing the web. It may be for

I don't understand why this is confusing anyone. There is a certain segment of the Internet populace that is interested only in browsing the web. It may be for lack of technical capability or interest (my mother-in-law) or it may be due to strict IT administration policies (K-12 schools). In any case, Chrome OS is the perfect OS when you don't want the user to have to worry about any of the technical details of maintaining a running appliance. They don't have to back anything up. They don't have to worry about background services or anti-virus software. Everyone gets the exact same experience on Chrome OS and it is web browsing and nothing more. I'll grant you that they probably could have gimped Android into a sort of "zero local state" mode. But at this point, Android is not capable of handling the desktop interaction model that people are accustomed to.