Today marks 15 years since the first Chromebooks hit the market. Google partnered with Acer and Samsung to get a range of devices ready for the big launch day in 2011. While the platform has gone on to enjoy enviable success in the education market, it continues to be sidelined in mainstream and premium markets, despite the best efforts of Google and partners.
Google’s vision in 2011 was to “make computing simpler and more accessible for everyone.” It arrived with this goal at the tail end of the netbook era, where there was a proliferation of cheap Windows thin and light designs that were infamous for becoming tragically slow in a short time. Some might describe the first Chromebooks as cloud-first evolutions of netbooks – and they indeed made much better use of limited hardware with fast boot times, browser-based workflows, and everything done in the cloud, easing the demands on the (typically) anemic hardware.
