The guy in charge of Chrome now also runs Android. Now what?

Yesterday Google announced that longtime Android leader Andy Rubin was stepping down as senior vice president of the division. This is big news, since Rubin had been with Android since before the company's 2005 acquisition by Google—he'll be replaced by Sundar Pichai, who, among other things, is also in charge of the Chrome division.

While we don't know much about the circumstances of Rubin's career move—by all appearances, he'll be staying with the company and working on other projects—we couldn't help but wonder what having the Chrome and Android teams under the same person could mean for Google's two operating systems, Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft Editor Peter Bright and I (Associate Writer Andrew Cunningham) both think that some crossover is inevitable, but we don't quite agree on the form it will take.

1. Andrew: This obviously opens the door for more collaboration between the Chrome and Android teams. I guess my question is how much.
2. Peter: Yes. The natural assumption, in my opinion, has always been that Android is the more fully fledged OS, and that while Chrome has a few little pieces that are better developed than their Android equivalents (cloud storage integration, logging on with your Google account), a "merger" would be much more Android than it is Chrome OS.
3. Andrew: I've always wondered whether a merger was ever in the cards, though. Google owned Android when it created Chrome OS. The two OSes seem to do different things, serve different needs.
4. Peter: Do they, though? Are they really that different? Android is still sandboxed and locked down (albeit often with easy ways of busting out, unlike Chrome OS), both are designed for cheap ARM hardware. And with the Chromebook Pixel, both are designed for touch hardware.
5. Andrew: Yeah, but I feel like Chrome OS is more of a Windows competitor. You've got the cheap Chromebooks they've put out recently that go for the light users who only really need a Web browser. They do the Chrome OS management console thing, which is very much like Active Directory minus the cumbersome infrastructure required for Active Directory.
6. Peter: If you don't want your own domain controller, can't you just use Office 365 and Intune?
7. Andrew: Sure. But the point is, Google is going after Microsoft's markets with Chrome OS.
8. Peter: Sure, but I think that becomes more credible with a merger with Android.
9. Andrew: When you say "merger," what do you mean?
10. Peter: Essentially putting Android on Chromebooks. Retain the browser-based app support and Chrome OS' system and user management, but with the much richer Android ecosystem.
11. Andrew: If they wanted to do that, wouldn't they have done it a long time ago, though? I could see that if the guy who ran Android were suddenly in charge of Chrome, but this is the other way around. Google's push with Chrome OS has always been about simplicity—it's just the browser, it's (usually) cheap, you don't worry about malware or installing a million programs or anything like that. And Google has always maintained pretty tight control over the software experience—it's just Chrome, and third parties can't do stuff to it that they can do to Android.
12. Peter: Yes, but I think that has two issues. Connectivity isn't as ubiquitous as Google likes to pretend, so "real apps" have value, and the limited features of Web apps simply rule out many markets. I think Chrome OS has natural limitations.
13. Andrew: It does, but Google's push to date has marketed those limitations as strengths.
14. Peter: You can fool some of the people some of the time...
15. Andrew: Heh. The thing about the general reaction to this that gets me is that everyone assumes that Chrome OS and Android are destined to become one, and I don't understand why that's the foregone conclusion, except that the tech pundits have never really gotten Chrome OS in the first place.
16. Peter: It's a foregone conclusion because Android is useful in general. Chrome OS isn't.
17. Andrew: I don't think the second thing is true. Chrome OS is Windows for people who do nothing but the Internet, without the complexities of Windows (for better or worse).
18. Peter: OK, but there is nobody who does that. There are people who might mainly do the Internet.
19. Andrew: It's not like Android is built to run without constant connectivity. You can find individual apps that do, of course, but it's a mobile phone OS. It was designed for something that is always connected to the Internet.
20. Peter: No, but it equips developers with the tools to make real offline apps.
21. Andrew: Chrome OS has the offline mode stuff, NaCl—the tools are there if people desperately want them.
22. Peter: I don't think they're really as developed or as widely used as on Android.
23. Andrew: And speaking of things that aren't really developed or widely used on Android, the tablet apps for that platform are still not great, and that would apply to a laptop too.
24. Peter: I'm not talking about Android apps as such, I'm talking about apps written for Android. Android toolchain, Android APIs, Android local deployment, but written for Chromebook hardware. So imagine QuickOffice for Android, but built to expect a landscape screen, a real keyboard, and an I-beam for the insertion point.
25. Andrew: Why is that preferable to Google Drive? Google already has a "solution" for this problem. I don't see how Android apps on Chrome OS makes it better.
26. Peter: Well the big difference would be that it would be robust when used offline, and it would be more capable than the current Web-based software.
27. Andrew: I think Google Drive is reasonably robust when used offline. The word processing features most users need are there.
28. Peter: I don't even use Word much, because I don't really do word processing, but I can't use the online apps. They're too deficient. I can't even use Google's spreadsheet reliably without suffering data loss when my browser gets mysteriously disconnected from their server.
29. Andrew: So. Maybe these are problems with Chrome OS. Maybe its utility would be increased with better offline apps. But Google has given no sign that it thinks these problems are problems, though the tech to "solve" them has been there for years. I don't know that the company is going to fix something that it doesn't think is broken, regardless of whether it's actually broken or people think it's broken.
30. Peter: But that's like saying it's given no sign that it thinks not having a touchscreen on Chromebooks was a problem. It didn't, until it made a Chromebook with a touchscreen.
31. Andrew: Sure, but a touchscreen is additive. It's the same experience with an added input interface. Suddenly putting apps on Chrome OS is a fundamental transformation. It completely runs up against years of effort and marketing on their part. It would be a pretty drastic shift in strategy.
32. Peter: I don't agree that it is. Which part of Chrome OS hinges on not having local apps? The security doesn't. The transferability between machines doesn't. The low price doesn't. Now, you would lose those things if you made it a total free-for-all like Android on smartphones, but I don't see them doing that. The rumblings about Samsung suggest that maybe, just maybe, they're seeing problems with that route (though I agree that past things like their hilarious failed update joint effort thing never managed to do anything).
33. Andrew: Which, again, suggests to me that maybe a more Chrome-like control over the software experience may creep into Android.
34. Peter: If they can. I think it's probably too late. That would be the one thing in favor of sticking with the Chrome OS name: take the good parts of Android (app infrastructure etc.), but call it Chrome OS so that you can justify keeping it locked down.
35. Andrew: It would probably be easy enough to make Android look and act just like Chrome OS if you really wanted. I just keep coming back to: if they wanted Chrome OS to be more like Android, then why isn't it already? Why have they made zero moves in that direction on the software side?
36. Peter: I don't know. I just don't think you can say, "they didn't do it in the past" as any kind of meaningful commentary. They didn't do lots of things in the past. That doesn't mean they won't do them in the future. And adding, for example, apps that are synced with your Google account, apps that are safely sandboxed, that seems pretty compatible with the Chrome OS model.
37. Andrew: Sure. You might have to draw the line at sideloading or something, at least for machines without the dev switch flipped. I'm not saying there wouldn't be benefits to devs and users. I just don't get why it's being treated as a given that it will happen. Rubin doesn't seem to be moving on under the same conditions as, say, Scott Forstall or Steven Sinofsky. With both of those, you get the idea that there was something that Apple or Microsoft wasn't happy with, and that they wanted to initiate some larger change. This switch-up will probably encourage a closer working relationship between the Chrome and Android teams, but I don't see merging the two as a priority for Google.
38. Peter: I think the Chromebook Pixel is an indication that merging the two is a priority.
39. Andrew: If your argument is "the Chromebook Pixel has a touchscreen, thus touch-enabled Android apps on Chromebooks are a given" I don't think I'm following.
40. Peter: The future of Chromebook is touchscreens, and Google's touchscreen development platform is Android. Android app support brings a lot of value to the Chrome OS proposition, and needn't compromise it (as long as things like the hardware root switch are retained). Touchscreen Chromebooks without something equivalent to Android apps make little sense, because Web apps aren't touch apps.
41. Andrew: Maybe so. I'm really less interested in what Android can do for Chrome OS, in all honesty. I'm more interested in what the person who runs Chrome might bring to Android. Chrome updates quickly, and Chrome hardware from any third party always comes with the designed-by-Google experience on it. Given that Google already feels a bit like Android is getting away from it (see Samsung), I wonder if he might try to control the operating system a little more tightly. They get bad press about the update situation pretty much constantly.
42. Peter: That's true. Android's app updates are great, but the OS update situation is sadness.
43. Andrew: There are obviously lots of other entities involved in making the update situation as miserable as it is. But they've made practically no serious efforts to rectify it.
44. Peter: Yes, and that's the big question in many ways: how much do they even care? They've paid the vaguest of lip service to acknowledging it as an issue, but something like 45 percent of people are still on Android 2.x!
45. Andrew: Well if you go by the argument that says they make more money on the data gathered by Android than by the OS itself, I can definitely see them wanting to roll things like Google Now out to more people. New Android versions can gather more data more efficiently!
46. Peter: Haha, yeah.
47. Andrew: But yes Android is complicated. It's very malleable and people can do basically anything they want to it. And I'm wondering (and kind of hoping) that a management shake-up might bring things just a little more under Google's control. You know, Chrome-style.
48. Peter: Yes, but Android wouldn't be getting a hojillion activations per second if it weren't for this situation.
49. Andrew: That's true.
50. Peter: if Android were tightly controlled, you wouldn't see all these Chinese phones that ship without the Google software, for example.
51. Andrew: Right. And I guess that's another thing. Android has been plenty successful just the way it is. Even though no one really cares about the Android brand outside of tech circles, it's still on a lot of phones bringing in a lot of data to Google. I wouldn't be surprised if Google just wants Pichai to stay the course, to some extent.
52. Peter: Possibly, but then why not promote someone from within the division?
53. Andrew: Yeah. Promoting the guy who runs Chrome to also run Android seems like a pretty explicit statement. I just have no idea what that statement is supposed to be.
54. Peter: Heh.
55. Andrew: And I suppose if I were in charge of Android and Chrome OS—the first a massive success despite some shortcomings, the second a niche product that probably can't grow out of that niche—I guess I'd also be looking at what Android features could be ported to Chrome OS. It's already kind of happening—there are screenshots of Google Now running in Chrome that have been making the rounds. I can see features being ported from one to the other, sort of like Apple does between OS X and iOS, but I don't know if they'd just out-and-out port Android to Chromebooks. I see Chrome OS and Android sharing features but not "merging" as such—they have separate goals and (at least so far) Google has taken separate approaches.