they should have done this in the first place. there was absolutely no reason to have parallel initiatives in android-on-the-desktop, fuschia, android and chromeos.
Google's operating system is android. it has won. extend that architecture to the chromeos.
Possible causes: The court case with Oracle regarding programming APIs and the underlying uncertainty probably didn’t help. And in some way to launch 5 times the same product allowed Googlers to grow internally as product launches are highly rewarded, while preserving the company’s interests by not putting all eggs in one basket.
There was a time when the chrome team were walking around telling everyone native android development was a dead end and chrome would take over everything. Then Google had some reorgs, certain people ascended to control both android and chrome, and suddenly android was a good thing.
It's funny to hear that from the other side. When there I saw how the Android team would throw around its own biases. I seem to recall that "Chromecast with Google TV" ended up having to be per-unit subsidized out of the Android PA's budget because they needed a heftier and more $$ SoC to be able to run Android on it than the dirt cheap ones we shipped Chromecast on.
There's technical merits to both platforms. The fact that Google had/has multiple Linux distributions all competing is ridiculous. I personally worked on HW products that used... (counts fingers) 4 of them? And then toss Fuchsia in there, too...
ChromeOS literally defined a whole market segment of low cost tablet/laptop devices that could be distributed in mass to schools/employees/etc. The security model was the best of any operating system option.
Android has its place on mobile, but we see how well it has gone for Microsoft trying to take a single OS and make it work across mobile/tablet/laptop.
Google's operating system is android. it has won. extend that architecture to the chromeos.