Without knowing more about the details, we can't assume that it's so simple. It might be that there is other software beyond Chrome itself that Netflix relies

Without knowing more about the details, we can't assume that it's so simple. It might be that there is other software beyond Chrome itself that Netflix relies on in Chromebooks, and that software may or may not play nice with arbitrary distributions. Example wild speculation: Netflix for the Chromebooks relies on a kernel extension for DRM, and they know they wouldn't be able to get the desktop Linux community at large to swallow that pill.