Chromebooks dominated in 2014, but they've been bumped and I'm not sure they'll ever be back at the top. Rather than a sea change, it looks like Google was just ahead of its competitors for a year, and now that year has come and gone.

Here in Germany, some chain stores do have a few of them at their little corner being ignored by everyone.

Pretty sure it didn't.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/chromebooks-best-...

You're right though, it wasn't 2014, it was 2012.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8784/hp-stream-11-review-a-new...

tl;dr: "...if you have been wanting a Chromebook running Windows, be sure to check out the HP Stream."

http://www.costco.com/ASUS-T100TAR-Transformer-Book-2-in-1-T...

detachable Touchscreen tablet, quad core, 2GB RAM, 32GB Storage

1) This system is listed at $199, not $149.

2) In the questions at the bottom, users do not recommend this as a Minecraft or gaming system.

Google does not sell your personal information in any way. They use it for their own advertising purposes, but they don't sell it to anyone, in any form.

As squeaky clean as everyone in the valley believes Google to be, even most Googlers would be surprised with the type of work and contacts taken on by Google Federal (hint: it's not just Google Apps for the military). Here is a list of their current unclassified military contracts: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/fpdsportal?indexName=awardfull...

If you're going to make a claim and drop a link on us, please tell us what's actually there to support your claim.

Most googlers who are also engineers can find out what most of these things are, and I would expect many are already aware of what those projects are likely to be. It is a core part of our culture that we share information openly within engineering, and don't leak it.

We can't tell you what's happening. That doesn't mean we don't know.

The NSA thing is disappointing and it's important that the electorate hold the government accountable, but democracy has not broken down yet, and the situation isn't quite as dire as, say, North Korea.

(Waiting for the "google employee compares US government to North Korea" headline, sigh...)

If you assume they're completely profit driven, it still makes sense for them to protect your data from other companies.

They maintain a demographic profile (arguable: how accurate and comprehensive it is) by way of this line of business, but at no point is that profile sold to advertisers.

At no point has Google, or any other reputable ad network, had a system whereby you can download the information, personal or otherwise, of a few million people.

This is misleading and hyperbolic. Stop it.

If you want a view as to what advertising is actually like and what an advertiser can actually see, go sign up for Adwords and step through the process. I guarantee it is not as sketchy as you make it out to be.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri...

That's not what this article says. This article is about what happens when the government lawfully issues a warrant to obtain somebody's private data, and orders a private company to give them the data. When this happens the company has some rights to recover their costs from the government.

You may not like what the US government is doing here. I certainly don't. But it's still the law, and companies that operate in the US have to comply with it.

It's interesting that you guys figured out how to circumvent the US tax law, by hiding money in tax havens. I guess dodging the NSA warrants is not a priority.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25910694

https://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/google-2015-will-be-the-...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/31/apple-face...

http://dcinno.streetwise.co/2014/11/17/google-microsoft-appl...

Warrants are comparatively straightforward. The paper says "jump", you say "how high?" or else. In any case, handed a warrant signed by a judge (kangaroo FISA court or otherwise), you hand over the info first and fight it later. Anything else is obstruction.

There is a significant difference between the two.

When you use mail.doubleclick.com for your email, and www.doubleclick.com to search the web, all from your DoubleClick based phone, its pretty easy to understand the situation.

Personally, I've got no issues letting them build a better profile in return for some of the best web services out there. I owe my career to the excellence of their search product.

At least for me, using DDG is like stepping back into the 90's as far as search result quality goes.

Some people wouldn't distinguish those two.

This includes potentially identifying information.

Google knows lots about me; people who buy adwords don't.

You can easily validate this by checking all the "pixels" (in the RTB sense) that are being deployed by Google. In their defense, they do mask a lot of things so stuff like the full IP address are not available (last time I worked on that they just give you the three first segments) but still quite a few information was available to target your demographic segment.

Edit:

For downvoters and people curious about tracking pixels: - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/1347585?hl=en - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2508388?hl=en

If you really want to learn more, you can read the wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/tracking_pixel

http://www.tinydeal.com/windows-tablets-c-997_1002.html?zeni...

These have the Quad Core Intel Atom Bay-Trail processor which is good enough for non compute demanding things and even some older games are running fine on them, also a quick search shows that Minecraft too runs playable on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7dBOaHmW94

Codestarter's Ubuntu Package comes with Minecraft and other programming/educational resources.

I am running an Acer 720 with 4gb of Ram and 128gb SSD - best laptop I've ever owned.

Paid $148.53 plus tax at BestBuy.com. At first I thought that the 32GB drive would be a problem but with the OneDrive integration she has plenty of space.

She also plays Minecraft and other games without any problems.

Some parents would consider this a good thing.

The HP Stream 7 and 8 has an x86 1.8ghz atom chip in it. BYOK. The Stream 11 has a keyboard but chimes in at $199. Games using DirectX and native libraries work. There are a lot of Stream 7 and 8 youtube videos showing gaming performance.

If anything, the Chromebook is overpriced. It really should be a $49 near disposable laptop. Even then, in the age of cheap tablets, it may not be more than an education market novelty.

More here: http://www.gizmag.com/five-windows-81-tablets-under-200/3497...

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150327VL201.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2015/03/29/microso...

At the $200-$300 price range there are many Windows choices - most with significantly better hardware and features.

Microsoft: Leave the sub $200 market to others and leverage your online services to sell to those consumers.

Those who don't learn from history will repeat it. Even those who made the history in question.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

"What market does the Chromebook create that a $200 netbook didn't already create?"

I prefer to think we mostly find markets rather than create them, generally speaking. Chromebook may find a market in India or Africa or China. Places where a mobile device was everybody's first experience with personal computing, so the idea of it being intimately tied to the network isn't so strange. And, just as importantly, where $50 is a weeks wages so it seems a lot more important to spend 25% less on the device.

I can see how me invoking Innovator's Dilemma here is possibly a stretch from some perspectives. Even if it is not disruptive innovation in the sense you prefer, it is still seeming more and more likely to continue to erode Microsoft's dominance in the places they have always been very, very strong: Cheap home PCs.

Also, I think the argument could be made that this is a better product for less money. Windows on such scanty hardware is a pretty rough experience. Chrome OS on tiny machines isn't so bad. And, for people who already only use their computer for Internet stuff, there are no benefits to the Windows experience and plenty of negatives.

So, this isn't a situation of, "Why would I get a dinky little fake computer if it's only $50 less than a good computer with Windows?" It's more of a "Why would I spend more for a computer that is slow, clunky, has a bunch of crap I don't need/want only so I can use also-ran webmail, online docs, etc. when I can get the market leading stuff for less?"

I dunno, really. I'm just trying to imagine this from the perspective of someone who didn't grow up in a world dominated by Microsoft, because that's the world we now live in. The world is now dominated by Google with Apple and Facebook as thought leaders on the periphery. Things are different now, and getting a computer with Windows on it just isn't a thing that (young) people care so much about.

MS/intel already have some incredibly cheap tablets (and Windows 8.1 reportedly runs well on them). Seems logical that MS will discount again. All they have to lose is everything.

The reason I say it was scary was that it was a moment in time where you could watch a class of computers from one generation to the next get worse because of limits imposed by Microsoft on OEMs. I bought a Dell Mini 9 just before they switched to the Mini 10. The Mini 10 actually had half the memory capacity of the Mini 9 (1GB vs 2GB in the Mini 9), because Microsoft defined "netbook" to have a maximum memory size and CPU power, which was lower than what netbooks had already climbed up to. Microsoft didn't want to see their margins decrease on "real" computers, but didn't want to cede the low end market to Linux. They saw the power of cheap then, and will probably see the power of cheap now. The difference is they don't have enough clout with enough manufacturers to dumb down these small computers.

So, yeah, I'd be surprised if they don't respond. They already have very low cost Windows Phone licenses in order to compete with Android (but it's not really working). Honestly, I believe we're entering a post-Microsoft world, even on the desktop. It'll be five or ten more years before Windows is no longer commonly seen, but it's already not really a foregone conclusion that computers should have Windows on them.

Microsoft was strongarming the manufacturers - in 2009, they could still do that easily (and they might still be able to today). The carrot and stick was reduced Windows licensing - but only if you make netbooks unusable. And thus netbooks died. I hope that Nadella's Microsoft is not like that - it looks way better than the Ballmer days - but having been bitten multiple times, I'll wait until I trust Microsoft again.

[0] http://www.pcworld.com/article/169919/5_netbooks_microsoft_h...

I also tend to get down-voted whenever I talk about nasty stuff Apple has done.

And, occasionally, when I do get a reply rather than or in addition to a downvote it will be of the form: "Well, X also does what you accused Y of." i.e., complaints about the monopolistic practices of Microsoft will result in, "Well, Google is also a monopoly, and I think they're worse because of this other thing." Which, while often true statements, do not provide any reason to dismiss the assertions about Microsoft they are responding to.

I am occasionally disappointed in HN. But, that's OK, because HN is occasionally disappointed in me.

One could argue the Nomad's market was much smaller (most people who bought iPods had never heard of it), partly because of Apple's aggressive advertising... which certainly helps "create" a market.

Here's an article from 1999 about a variety of digital music distribution.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/netnotes.559....

Just in the comments here are mentioned: low-hassle machine for grandparents (which the HNer has to admin, who influences the decision); low cost and low hassle machine for school kids (which the school has to admin, an who decides); second or third backup machine; machines for the developing world; for people working mostly in chrome browser (which is faster than on Windows), which includes most of us, and some HN even dev in web IDEs.

Cheaper + low-hassle + web-optimised also makes them attractive, to almost everyone.

Do these poor people that this device is targeting also have sufficient money to pay for constant network access? The total cost of ownership for one of these suddenly becomes very high when you factor that in.

eg. a 5K iMac is 2499 USD and 1999 GBP. That makes it about 3000 USD. Using that basis, the £50 tablet would retail in the US at 60 USD.

Also, Chromebooks usually seem to be targeted at kids or tech illiterate folks who don't want the complexity of Windows. Even a $99 Windows machine won't change that.

And what about the security of Chrome OS? It's "virtually" unhackable, while Windows...well, it's Windows.

As for Minecraft, Google has been promising Android apps on Chromebooks, so maybe before long that will work, too. But as others have said, it's still $150 hardware. So I wouldn't expect too much from it.

Also, last I checked Office also runs in the browser now? Microsoft seems to be making quite a big deal about that actually.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. In my machine IE and Firefox beats Chrome performance almost in everything. And I have seen ~$100 tablets running Windows 8.1 and the performance is far from crappy.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KCKXIXE/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_d...