The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

However it's insane if you consider how many device drivers there are for Windows and Linux. The large majority of Linux kernel code is drivers. When you consider that Linux still has problems to run on certain hardware, then the problem becomes more obvious.

My bet is, in case this ever becomes a success, then only for a subset of vendors that are willing to cooperate closely with Google. (Oh yeah, and everybody needs to throw away the old hardware.)

I wished efforts would instead go into improving Linux Kernel. It reminds me of Google saying that JavaScript is a complete dead end and must be replaced. So they created Dart which surely has a great design but nobody uses it - and JS is now better than ever.

Moreover it's a bit of a lame excuse that vendors don't update their Android modifications. It already start that Google doesn't manage to get their Linux kernel modifications into the mainline Kernel - almost violating OpenSource principles...

2. It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time.

3. Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products.

(I had more, but it's hard to concentrate on the first of January :) )

They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given.

And why exactly is ChromeOS not a consumer OS?

>Even after literally years of development it's still riddled with inconsistencies (visual and behaviour), performance issues, security issues etc.

You make it sound as if inconsistencies, performance and security issues are isolated to Android. Which is ridiculous considering the plethora of inconsistencies, performance issues and security exploits on other platforms. As for security issues, no Pixel has ever been hacked at a PwnToOwn event while iOS devices consistently are.

>It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time.

Have you looked at iOS recently? Apple doesn't even follow their own guidelines nor do the vast majority of the special snowflakes on the App store. And I won't even go into the disaster that is Metro/Modern or whatever they're calling it now on the Windows platform.

>Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products.

Mac OS was a third party acquisition and iOS was created from that so you could make the argument that even iOS is the result of a third party acquisition. The fact is these products would never be as successful as they are today without the resources and money its taken to get them to this point.

>They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given.

It's not really a question of if they can pull it off, but rather when they'll pull it off. If nothing else Fuchsia will be the new OS used by Google internally replacing their current customized Linux distribution. And if that's the extent of Fuchsia's use then it'll still be considered a win, but that's not where it's going to end in my opinion. I see Fuchsia surpassing Linux in desktop OS market share rather quickly and eventually challenging Mac OS in the long term.

There is also no reason they can't replace Linux underneath Chrome OS with new Foundations. After all Linux internals were never exposed to the consumers in Chrome OS. As long as they port Chrome, they should be able to do it at least theoretically. Same theory could apply to Android but that would be much harder to do I think.