Q: My son’s school is equipping all the children with Chromebooks that run Chrome OS. I run Chrome on my PC. How are they all related? Are they all from Google? Is Chrome OS any good?
A: That’s a lot of questions! Let’s start with the most basic of definitions; Google Chrome is a popular Web browser available for a lot of different operating systems, including both MacOS and Windows. Chrome OS is built atop Chrome and adds basic operating system features so it can replace the operating system on the device. A Chromebook is a computer that runs Chrome OS (instead of Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, etc).
I have been running Chrome OS on various Chromebook systems from HP, ASUS and Lenovo for many years, and it’s pretty darn solid at this point. The latest version of Chrome OS is version 101 and it frequently upgrades with new features and capabilities. At this point, it’s surprisingly similar to Windows and particularly easy to use if you’re a PC fan.
To put these releases in a historical context, Google Chrome was first released in September 2008. Chrome OS was first released in June 2011, and the first Chromebooks hit the market on February 2013. It’s all been around for a while now.
The motivation behind Chrome OS was to create a free and simple operating system that could run on inexpensive hardware to lower the cost of deploying it across schools and other institutions. Built atop Linux, it was also intended to be easier than Windows, but it’s definitely succumbed to what techies call “creeping featurism”. It’s not so simple any more, but it’s definitely more powerful and far more flexible than when first released by Google.
We also can’t talk about Chrome without talking about Chromium, which is the open source version of the Web browser. It’s a rather complicated ecosystem at this point, and making it even more surprising, Microsoft’s terrific Edge Web browser is built on Chromium! That’s why Edge and Chrome seem so darn similar if you’ve tried them both on your computer.
You can even install Chrome OS on a PC if you’re curious how it works, though you’ll actually be installing Chromium OS which is the open source version of Chrome OS. Learn more at www.chromium.org.
The long and short of it is that Google has done something rather remarkable: They’ve built the most popular Web browser on the Internet, then leapfrogged into creating an entirely new operating system and inspiring some of the best hardware manufacturers in the world to create laptops dedicated to their Chrome OS. Nicely done.
Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the early days of the Internet. He runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech help site. You can also find his gadget reviews on YouTube and chat with him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor, too.
