This: "they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS)"... I've been thinking the same exact thing. Google basically split the ecosystem in half...devs have to unnecessary build seperate apps for each (unless they are using a cross platform engine).
Not really... chromeos is the bare minimum linux environment to run a chrome browser on laptop hardware. Android is some frankenstein of java IDE to develop phone software.
They might-should-be the same, but they're fundamentally very different roots.
I'm going to take a slightly controversial point of view and say: Android should have been ported to chromeos.
Newer phones should've shipped with the ping-pong update system, and the secure permissions system that permeates Linux.
Instead we're left with, what is really 75% a hack, Android. The update system sucks. The "recompiling" of app sucks. The permissions system sucks. The bloat really sucks. I am pretty sure my Nexus One was more responsive than my last Nexus phone, or any of the competition (which also, despite Google's best (awful) efforts have deviated in user experience greatly).
Google, once a golden god of the entire computer/software industry has fallen so far. It's really depressing. I wonder if it is even possible for a business to succeed the way Google used to and be profitable.
It's only a matter of time before someone eats their lunch, just the same as Microsoft. In 15 years $COMPANY will dominate and we'll be in the same spot.
A major tenant of Chrome is the rolling update model, nobody has ever got the android vendors to do anything slightly like that. My Moto E gen2 got 1 year of updates that's it.
Back at the time phones hadn't scaled up enough. Remember how horrid early android (and iphones) were? I actually skipped the first generation entirely (and only got my first smart phone because it would be better than my existing phone and have GPS navigation as it's killer app).
Because Android is the big dog. Android can and very well may eat the world. It's a very easy distro to abuse.
Chromeos on the other hand is a very well-thought-out distro that is extremely simple and low-level, enough that it could easily form the basis of a great OS like Android
