I'd argue that to most people the browser _IS_ the centre of their computer-based universe anyway!

If I use my own family as an example:

My wife spends all her time at her computer in Microsoft Edge (she has a Mac and Safari doesn't work properly with a load of sites she uses)

My son only plays games on his Switch and when he gets a computer next year, I'd bet it will be for surfing the web and playing streaming games

My mum and dad only use the browser on the Windows PC they have (and the iPad too)

My use case involves dev work and uni work so I can't use a Chromebook.

People want zero-friction. If they can open a browser, or better, click a link at the bottom on the taskbar that opens their "application" then they don't care what's behind it.

Chromebooks definitely have their place... that being said, Google's customer service leaves a lot to be desired and putting all your eggs in that basket is a risky proposition.

True, but that still doesn't justify crippling a device. If it was the other way around - browser (and apps) integrated seamlessly in the desktop, all use cases will be covered, including yours. And we'd be having a powerful and sleek OS that can do everything for everyone without the weight of the windows/mac behemoth.

With the mere action of including lxc in it later, it shows how much full functionality is wanted in such a device. But it's ass-backwards now.

Starting with the core use case for most people seems like a smart engineering and business decision. Chromebooks value proposition is to be the simplest, safest and cheapest laptops to access the web. It makes it clear what people will be able to do with it and makes it different enough to more general laptop to be marketable. Building this on ChromeOS seems like the simplest way to reach those goal. Extending Chrome means that most of the UX is already understood by users and the codebase is already built with many of the same goals in mind.

I completely understand wanting to have more capabilities on these Chromebooks though. I ran elementaryOS on an HP Chromebook for many years and it was amazing for the price. A great battery life, good keyboard and touchpad and a full blown OS that is also lightweight and snappy. But I think that the annoying thing is that the same hardware isn't sold by the manufacturer without ChromeOS.

Ten years ago Google sent me a Cr-48[1] and I spent two years as a beta tester. I always assumed it was to be some sort of web terminal, but beefier than a netbook. I am stunned how far it has progressed (he writes on his Chromebook)...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Cr-48

It was a lifesaver in university. I barely had the $60 I needed for a used Chromebook -- it gave easy access to all the online gradebooks and assignment postings, I had ready access to google docs and overleaf, the battery lasted all day even with 8+ hours of active use, with crouton I had a nearly complete Linux CLI (math major here, jupyter with sympy was extremely useful). As an added bonus it weighed in under 3lbs; due to unforeseen circumstances I was biking a fair ways to school each day, and after a textbook or two every extra pound mattered.

Was a Chromebook the only workable solution? No, of course not. Having _something_ was a huge advantage over hoping the library would be open some time you weren't in class or working (a tenuous proposition, especially near weekends or anything that might be misconstrued as a holiday), and in that price bracket there was no competition that came close to a Chromebook.

> browser instead of integrating a browser into an OS.

I don't think the average user cares, as long as they can do what they need to do. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

> instead of integrating a browser into an OS

Microsoft tried that with IE, and got sued. They ended up having to add a 'carousel' of alternate browser options during a users first login.

Guessing no-one wants to tempt fate like that again.

The browser has take on many of the original functions of the OS in terms of hardware abstraction. And much more reliably than a traditional OS. For evidence of this just look at the chrome special pages on GPU support.