Why Google Is Bringing Phone Tech to Its Chromebooks

Google is folding parts of Android into its Chromebooks, bringing all that mobile efficiency to its laptops, plus a whole bunch of bad tooth-related puns.

Starting with Bluetooth, Google will be replacing parts of its ChromeOS—the operating system for Chromebooks—with parts from Android, its phone operating system. The advantages, as we shall see, are quite clear for everyone involved, including Chromebook users, and even folks who want nothing to do with Google's computers.

"From my time at Samsung managing complex supply chain integrations, I saw the tremendous value of standardizing data systems. It minimizes errors and headaches for both businesses and consumers. This type of strategic alignment across Google's software is really appealing in terms of delivering [the] seamless, worry-free experiences people want," Puneet Gogia, an analyst, ex-supply chain analyst at Samsung, and the Founder of Excel Champs, told Lifewire via email.

Android Meets Chrome

Both Android and ChromeOS are based on Linux, the underlying OS for all kinds of computers. Linux sits under the hood, powering and controlling everything, with the user interface—the windows, menus, and all the other stuff you see and tap or click—sitting on top. Up until now, it seems, Google has been developing both of its operating systems separately, which has meant a lot of duplicated effort. Now, though, it's starting to consolidate the two.

"The benefits to Google here are obvious: instead of developing and maintaining two variants of the Linux kernel and various related subsystems, they now only have to focus on one, saving money and time," writes operating system expert Thom Holwerda on his OSNews blog.

Given that Linux is flexible and powerful enough to run anything from a personal computer right down to the control panel in a fancy refrigerator, and that laptops are now as connected and almost as mobile as phones, this makes sense.

But what's in it for users? Well, another way to look at this is that Google is taking the best bits of Android and putting them into ChromeOS, starting with Bluetooth.

Floss, Fluoride, Tooth

The first change will be folding Android's Bluetooth controllers into ChromeOS, which will have an immediate and surprisingly large effect. As you might imagine, Bluetooth is pretty essential to a phone, and so optimizing it for efficiency is important. You want it to use as little power as possible, to connect quickly, and to generally be efficient. And that's exactly what's happened when porting Android's Bluetooth "stack" to ChromeOS.

"Google performed internal tests to measure the improvements as a result from switching ChromeOS from BlueZ to Fluoride, and the test results speak for themselves—pairing is faster, pairing fails less often, and reconnecting an already paired device fails less often. With Bluetooth being a rather problematic technology to use, any improvements to the user experience are welcome," wrote Holwerda.

Yes, Fluoride is the name of Android's Bluetooth project, har har, and the puns don't stop there. The project to bring Fluoride to Chrome is called Project Floss. A billion dads are nodding in silent appreciation right now.

Oddly, Google's stated reason behind this is to bring Android and ChromeOS closer, so that it can deploy new AI features faster, so we suppose something good has finally come from all this AI hype. But the goodness is not necessarily limited to Google's ecosystem. Because Linux is an open-source project, and both Chrome and Android are built on it, other Linux operating systems can take these improvements and incorporate them.

This means that anyone who has, say, resurrected an ancient PC laptop or MacBook by installing Ubuntu or another popular Linux flavor in place of Windows or macOS could benefit from faster, more efficient Bluetooth, and in the future, improvements in whatever else Google brings from Android to Chrome.

That's a pretty radical thought. The idea that my more-than-a-decade-old MacBook Air, which is currently running Linux, and feels like a new computer, could get even faster, with better battery life, is amazing. That's likely never going to happen under Apple or Microsoft. Bring it on, Google.