Google ends the speculation and announces that Android and ChromeOS are to be brought under one roof.
It has been hinted at for several months, but now it’s official: Google will merge the two operating systems Android and ChromeOS into one platform.
The announcement was made during a Techradar interview with Sameer Samat, who heads up Google’s Android ecosystem department. Samat had asked the interviewer at the beginning about his usage behavior with Apple products and gave the following answer as justification:
I asked about that because we’re going to merge ChromeOS and Android into a single platform, so I’m very interested in how people use their laptops these days and what they do with them.
Technical foundations have already been laid
In view of the speculation to date, this announcement should come as no surprise. Even without the rumor mill, Google developers had implemented several functions in recent months that pointed to closer interaction between the two operating systems:
- Back in June 2024 Google had announced that ChromeOS would use “large parts of the Android stack” in the future, including the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks.
- The two operating systems already share a common Linux base, albeit with different architectures. Nevertheless, many Android apps can be run on ChromeOS without any problems.
The preparations for the merger are already evident in Android 16. The new update brings a fully-fledged desktop mode that offers improved window management and optimized support for external screens. Users can use apps in freely positionable windows that behave in a similar way to Windows.
Fittingly, rumors surfaced last year that Google would like to expand the Pixel series with a fresh laptop. Even then, Android was mentioned as a potential operating system for “Codename Snowy”.
However, the timetable for both the Pixel laptop and the announced fusion of ChromeOS and Android has not been defined. Samat at least did not reveal when the merger would take place.
