John Gruber over at Dring Fireball says, "It makes no sense to me why Chrome OS isn’t based on Android. "
I wonder whether he though about and discounted (and if so, why?) the seemingly obvious reason, that Android is a Java platform and Chrome OS is intended to be an Open Web (HTML+CSS+images+JavaScript) platform.
If that's not an obvious distinction and sensible differentiation to smart folks like John, maybe I'm the one that's missing the right answer here.
Still, it sounds to me like Android is a platform for installed Java apps and Chrome OS is supposed to be a platform for hosted Open Web apps. Java really isn't at all the same thing as Open Web tech. Local and remote apps aren't really the same thing either.
I think this is Google betting on the Open Web, the way the that Palm did with WebOS on the Pre, rather than betting on native apps the way Apple, Linux, and Microsoft have.
