There’s a lot to be excited about for the future of Chromebooks. Here’s everything new in the world of Chromebooks coming out of Google I/O 2021.
Chromebooks aren’t the flashiest product in Google’s lineup, so they rarely take the spotlight at the Google I/O developer conference. But this year, Google made the point that as a whole, Chrome OS products grew 92% year-over-year. Between the sweeping changes to cross-platform design, updates to Google Chrome, and some new Chrome OS-specific features, there’s a lot to be excited about for the future of Chromebooks. Here’s everything new in the world of Chromebooks coming out of Google I/O 2021. We already knew Chromebooks would be getting updated to Android 11 (from Android 9), but there’s a bigger change in store with the implementation. Announced in one of the developer sessions, Android will no longer be running in a container. Instead, it will now run as a virtual machine to match what Chrome OS already does with Linux. Google says this switch will help make apps more secure, as well as “reduce divergence from mainline Android.” Though Google says the migration will be seamless for both developers and Chromebook users, the move will supposedly result in faster Android updates for Chromebooks, which is great. Having access to Android apps is a big feature of Chromebooks these days, but that doesn’t mean most Android apps are optimized for Chromebooks.
