They are, for those of us that live outside US.

I might have seen around 5 total, on sale across European consumer stores, since they exist.

Maybe it's where I live, but I can only remember seeing one Chromebook, and that was years ago.

The fact that many people believed the dream -- including myself twenty years ago -- doesn't make the dream any more realistic. Eventually, people notice that they would like to do more things than their browser allows them to.

So, yes it is true that people have been willing to migrate to cheaper, limited computers (but mainly tablets and phones; not tiny laptops). But those computers are not generally modeled after using the browser for everything.

Are you comparing the web now to the web then? I would even argue that Chromebooks are a pretty big flop.

By what metric?

Chromebooks are successful as school computers, children's laptops and literally nothing else. If that was the goal then great but I've never seen someone who wasn't under 14 or a student using one.