From the FAQ: "Over the long term CloudReady will become an official Chrome OS offering, and existing customers will be upgraded seamlessly as that happens."
So it sounds like there is some kind of actual migration plan, even if Neverware itself is getting shut down.
While true to some degree, Google's prior record with services, like Songza -> Google Music Play-> YouTube Music, support the knee jerk reaction. It'll start as an official Chrome OS offering before it eventually is shut down and assimilated into Chrome OS entirely.
The question is the step after full assimilation: I suspect that just folding neverwhere into normal Chrome OS would actually be a win for users; the question is of whether that assimilation is followed by the whole thing getting killed off or not.
FYI: Neverware is a Google Chromium OS based distribution that you can load onto most laptops through a USB stick. It's main aim is to be able to transform your old PC or Mac laptop into a ChromeOS laptop.
They've been working pretty closely with the Google ChromeOS team for a while across the consumer, business, and education markets. This deal may be a way for Google to expand the number of devices running ChromeOS.
Isn't this only because ChromeOS doesn't do anything. xubuntu would be just as easy to use if you confined yourself to a web browser and only used web apps too.
Because not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge. Because typing ‘pacman -Syu’ 7 times a week gets annoying. Because you want to use the apt/.deb package ecosystem. Because Ubuntu is easier to install, and doesn’t require you to make a huge number of choices about what packages to install. Because you want to use Proton, Lutris and Steam without needing to patch things. Because most $BIGCORP orgs don’t realize that there are ecosystems besides .deb and .rpm. Because Ubuntu is what you already know.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a big fan of Arch, but there are a lot of reasons to not prefer it over Ubuntu.
Not really; Gentoo isn't "bleeding edge" the way arch is (unless you explicitly configure it that way), and Google builds it into a "final product" that's ready-to-use without configuring.
More than just underlying code; it's directly based on Gentoo and it uses Portage. See the first line of the Wikipedia article on Chrome OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS
That's not what I meant. Sure, underneath it shared tech. But when people think of Gentoo, they think 'build from source' and get every kernel dot release etc.. ChromeOS isn't related in that sense.
As someone who started w/ Ubuntu, distro-hopped around for 6 years of my childhood, and has for the past 4 years used Arch: Linux describes a spectrum of experiences, and .DEB-based systems are the soda and potato chips of the gourmet linux feast. Fedora is a sandwich, Manjaro might be steak. Arch is kind of an empty kitchen with a ton of stuff in it, and Gentoo is a legendary chef on top of a mountain someplace.
tl;dr - it's fine to snack on potato chips, but don't expect people to all want to eat the same thing. Variety is powerful.
No. Organizations who are using this to revive old hardware do this because it integrates with ... their ChromeOS installed base. Central management, unified app deployment etc.
Also the big one, atomic and transparent updates and upgrades. I love Ubuntu (and worked there for a long time!), but no way I'm giving a mutable OS to someone unless I expect to be their sysadmin. They're one google search away from a broken computer, they can't really break chromeOS.
Seriously, the amount of time I needed to assist my relatives since they switched to ChromeOS became almost null.
They don't play AAA games, they don't really do administrative work (and the times they do, Google Drive can help), and they can't really break it even if they tried.
Different user groups. If you’re savvy enough to know about Xububtu as an option, then you don’t really need Neverware. The issue is for those that can’t or won’t use a Nix, but might find a ChromeOS palatable.
Personal anecdote, but I had a hard time getting this to work with HP computers a few years ago. imo The issue is more on HP's end than with Neverware though
I believe it needs to be installed on the system. It requires the ChromeOS Recovery Tool on a chromium browser to create the USB, which I don't think supports liveboot.
Wow, this product is... really clever. Especially when put on one of the "mini" USB sticks that sit nearly flush with the port.
It seems like it could potentially really enable massive reuse of older, slower laptops that might otherwise be thrown away.
It seems to me like handling driver support would be the hard part. Is that their special sauce?
I can't see this as anything but a clear win for the environment and for education. And unlike the "Google shuts down everything" meme, this seems so obviously massively helpful to their entire ChromeOS strategy it looks like it'll be here to stay.
The problem I see is that Neverware was filling in a gap where Google has failed to provide extended support. That wasn't something Google couldn't do before... it just didn't want to.
So this acquisition likely means a return to old Chromebooks being ewaste because Google bought out the company that was providing a longer lifecycle.
When Google's team decides a computer is too old to support, do you think their other team is going to be allowed to step in and support it?
Google is likely interested in CloudReady for it's newer uses on Windows PCs, I've seen an employer ship a brand new HP laptop with CloudReady on it instead of the OEM Windows license included. But long term support is likely going to suffer.
Well, that’s why couching your point in a gimmick like sarcasm rarely contributes to your comment. In fact, de-gimmick your comment and I wonder if you would have considered there enough substance to post it at all.
I’m having trouble interpreting it myself (see the problem?) but I believe it would go something like “I’ve observed some irony: Google used to have the motto «don’t be evil» and what you describe sounds evil.” Feel free to correct it.
“ Eventually you will initiate support requests directly with Google in the same way that you do for Chrome OS.”
(Full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried to get support for Chrome OS, but I’m fairly confident in assuming it’s right up to Google’s usual support quality standards...)
> Full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried to get support for Chrome OS
Congrats: You are lucky and have well placed confidence.
If you go through the user support it doesn't seem to go anywhere. If you then open a chromium bug like a chrome browser developer would, they will say they got no reports on the user channel and then the bug sheriff will eventually close it.
The main thing I hate about modern software development is the failure to understand one source of truth is incompatible with arbitrarily damaging information to fudge numbers. Virtually everything in their database can be correctly marked a duplicate of something they already closed, automatically, possibly without even reading it.
Aah Slax. My gateway drug into the Linux world and experimenting with computers in general. Back when I was in school looong ago when I got a copy in a tech magazine I bought from a streetside vendor.
Forgot about it at some point, I'm glad too to see it's still around! Doubt I'd be in tech or so interested in tinkering or programming or whatever if it weren't for that.
have several old laptops accumulated over the years, and they are running these days much better under the PuppyLinux purely from USB than they did back then under XP, Vista, 7.
I agree with other commenters that Neverware was bought not for old laptops. It is the supposedly zero-administration of Cloudready that in some CXX targetting PowerPoint looks like that old mainframe/terminal setup or like JavaStation (you stick the badge in and your work environment comes up) - CXX like to cut costs through magic of zero-administration/etc. May be Google will even risk to roll it out internally.
Neverware's original business/idea was in enabling massive reuse of older, slower computers in the education space by making them thin client devices if I remember correctly (back when it was 5 guys working out of General Assembly). Anyway congrats Jonathan and crew. It's been a long journey
I would say the "sauce" as in their willingness to support more hardware. Much of the "driver" support comes from Linux, and Linux already runs on the devices that Cloudready supports.
It the re-use of old hardware that might be thrown away it's just potential, it's happening at scale right now.
My mother used a Thinkpad T450 with Cloudready for years. To her it was a Chromebook with a larger screen than her old 11" one.
It's weird right? I mean if you were the Neverware people you're just updating your customers about this change. In steps a third party like HN and publishes that announcement, and suddenly it's this out of context, wtf is this moment for tens of thousands of people.
That's more the fault of hacker news and the submitters of the url (it's a page inside of a knowledgebase ...) and also the upvoters of the article.
Imagine, all those upvotes needed to make this a front page article, NONE of those upvoters know what the company is or the context behind it, just that Google did something, so they upvote.
Then you see all these discussion posts about not knowing what it was, and why it's on the front page, etc.
It's basically HN's version of the blind leading the deaf.
I submitted it. I found the story on android central https://www.androidcentral.com/google-just-bought-neverware-... but it was basically just a regurgitation of the press release so I submitted the press release instead because I assumed it would be better to submit the original source but I can see that android central's article does give some context.
I've used cloudready a little bit when I was teaching an introductory class to high school students who I knew all had chromebooks and I wanted to make sure things I was assigning would work on them.
I've read (and like) Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere but I fail to see the connection here. Is it just the name? Because I don't see any other relation to this product. It's as if I released a tool called Silmarillion and it was just some productivity app or whatnot.
I CTRL+F'ed through their "about us" page and no mention of Gaiman, either.
I use Neverware's Chrome OS on an old Google Pixel Chromebook. Google stopped supporting that Chromebook so I needed to switch to Neverware's version of the Chrome OS if I wanted to keep getting updates.
Neverware's Chrome OS is a downstream version of the Chrome OS that you get on new Chromebooks.
I do hope that with this acquisition, Neverware's product improves. One chronic problem I have with my pixel chromebook is that I had to disable some security settings to install Neverware's Chrome OS, which causes some problems every time they do an update.
I had an OG Chromebook Pixel, too. Beautifully-crafted laptop, still probably my favorite looking piece of hardware I've ever owned
I hated to see it gathering dust in a drawer, so I removed the write-protect screw on the motherboard, blew away the BIOS, and installed a normal BIOS w/ Linux Mint on it. Runs fine. In hindsight I wish I had tracked down the 2015 LS version, since the OG version only has about 4 hours of battery life.
I agree, it is a beautiful laptop! I need to remove the write-protect screw from the motherboard to fix the update problems. I haven't gotten around to it yet. When I do that I will also replace the battery, as mine now has a 2 hour battery life and requires 10 hours to charge.
Were you able to get the touch screen working under Linux? How did you install a normal BIOS?
Be careful when removing the case to get at the write-protect screw, though! Mine was being incredibly stubborn when I tried to get it off, and I unfortunately broke off one of the plastic clips. I was able to get it back on after a few attempts and there's no longer an air-gap between the lid and the board, but I can unfortunately hear the broken clip rattling around when I carry the laptop.
This was a nice project. Used the open source variation of Chrome OS: Chromium OS. They have a nice hardware compatibility list. In my brief experiments with them, it worked well. They gave away the OS and charged for support in large deployments. I hope they'll survive this acquisition.
I personally think they will. In a time when many schools are short of money, it makes sense to allow deployment of Chrome OS to existing hardware. Allows Google to expand Chrome OS's base while working within budgets that don't allow for mass purchases of new machines.
For those looking to try Chrome OS on their personal equipment, there's not only Neverware, but there's also the Brunch Project. The Brunch Project uses the official Chrome OS images and provides a way to install them. Neverware sometimes lacked certain features because of their use of Chromium OS, but the Brunch Project avoids that problem by using the official images.
"The Brunch framework purpose is to create a generic x86_64 ChromeOS image from an official recovery image. To do so, it uses a 1GB ROOTC partition (containing a custom kernel, an initramfs, the swtpm binaries, userspace patches and config files) and a specific EFI partition to boot from it."
> They gave away the OS and charged for support in large deployments. I hope they'll survive this acquisition.
I’m now imagining the announcement to existing support contract users.
“Your account has been migrated to Google’s legendary customer support platform. To receive support, ensure you’re logged in using your paid support email address. Google search will then unlock enhanced Chrome OS problem search mode, allowing you to find other user’s workarounds to your problems! In the event this does not solve your issue, please scream into the void as usual. Our support staff will get back to you never.“
I don't suppose you know of any that don't use Chrome? The main reason I wanted to use this is because it used ChromiumOS without all the Google proprietary crap. Now it looks like I'm back to rolling a custom Linux distro...
There's an interesting Ubuntu spin off called Ubuntu Web Remix. That boots to a simplified desktop that revolves around the browser and PWAs. Their browser of choice is Firefox. This Ubuntu variant is designed to be a Chrome OS replacement. I haven't tried it, but it looks quite interesting.
I wouldn't be surprised to see someone attempt a Chrome OS clone at a startup or corporate level. Seems like all the building blocks are there. Someone just needs to assemble it. Simple desktop that revolves around Firefox. With an immutable base system and seamless, invisible-to-the-end-user containers.
This will be frustrating when Google decides (as they always do) to stop supporting the older hardware. I use the Home Edition for my parent's computer. The update process is virtually seamless for my parents and it just works.
ChromeOS has been going through a big process to divorce the browser updates from the operating system updates, so that they can continue to deliver updates to the browser itself even after older hardware stops being supported.
as it is, you can keep using the old hardware after support ends, you'll just have an outdated browser and linux kernel. In the future, that problem should be reduced to just having an outdated kernel.
If I were splitting hairs about it I wouldn't personally call the bulk of them "distros," if only because the overall Android ecosystem is that much more homogeneous compared to one like GNU. The extent to which features or visual tweaks are added will vary, but your underlying system will generally be the same regardless of whether you're running LineageOS, Paranoid Android, Carbon or most others. (Some exceptions include Bliss, which maintains a desktop-focused x86 build; /e/, which is specifically built around MicroG; and GrapheneOS, a hardened build specifically for Pixels.)
With that said though -- yes, if you're into modding or general preservation there are a variety of community spins of Android, and potentially even a small scattering of other Linux-based systems depending on your device.
Now that Android requires the use of a GSI -- or generic system image -- in testing, device compatibility is also significantly better than it used to be. That said, you're still limited to those that support bootloader unlocking. (Notably, while they don't implement this internationally, if you're US-based Samsung is out.) Additionally, GSIs will still have edge cases around drivers (since they don't have to actually work on production devices), Google apps generally have to be loaded separately, and even then the act of opening your bootloader to begin with trips SafetyNet -- which breaks everything from banking apps (for the sensitive-data protections this was originally intended to cover) to Netflix (for DRM) to various games (for anti-cheat) to... Snapchat for some reason?
Where this starts to really get exciting is that, over the next year or two, that requirement for generic image compatibility will be extending to the kernel, on devices that are actually shipping to users. Treble's launch triggered a sort of second wave within the custom ROM scene, as it meant they no longer strictly needed to be ported to devices on an individual basis -- a limitation which up until now has still existed for the kernel.
Some particularly interesting details around this are that a custom kernel is required to run Halium (a GNU compatibility layer for Android devices that allows images like Ubuntu Touch to be loaded as GSIs), and that Android 11 can actually boot on a minimally-patched mainline assuming that all necessary drivers exist.
Very cool. Would be great if they could do something similar for Android! (Not realistic given that the driver situation on mobile devices is such a nightmare.)
My guess is that the existance of Neverware Chrome OS prevents Google from making certain changes to Chrome OS, and that buying out Neverware eliminates that obstacle.
How so? It's not like Google had any contractual obligations; if they made a change that was incompatible with neverwhere, then neverwhere would just be stuck, wouldn't they? Unless you mean that Google intends to do something user-hostile, but then there's nothing stopping another Chromium OS derivative from coming along.
When the lockdown hit in March I used this to repurpose a stack of old Thinkpads I had lying around as Chromebooks and handed them out to nieces and nephews that needed them. It worked great.
It's more like RedHat acquiring CentOS, but yes that's a legitimate concern.
I've used CloudReady to turn old laptops that would otherwise be junked into Chromebooks, adding years to their life for family members that needed very low maintenance simple laptop like a Chromebook.
It will be a shame environmentally if it becomes harder to rehab old laptops like this in the future.
One other option that I like is ElementaryOS - simple enough UI and lightweight. It's not Chromebook lightweight but I've put it on some 10+ year old clunkers with no issues. Plus it keeps you and your family members out of the Google surveillance dragnet.
I count two “for the moment”s, two “no immediate changes”s and five “at this time” weasel word qualifiers in the thirteen answers they provide in this FAQ.
I know an acquired company cannot ever say with any certainty or conviction “things won’t change!”, so it’s kinda as honest as I suspect legal has allowed them to be.
If I were responsible for a fleet of Neverware devices, I’d be immediately fast tracking investigations into suitable alternatives and migration plans.
It's weirdly weasel-worded, too, like... your company was acquired by Google. There is exactly 0% chance of there being no changes. Why even bother pretending otherwise? Does anyone actually believe that things aren't going to change?
EDIT: Like, it doesn't even have to be a bad thing! Sell it! Go hog with "we're integrating processes to make the product better for users" and "this will let us ship updates faster" and "you'll get more features now that we're an official Google product" (Android support, hopefully). There's no reason to go with this absurd premise that there will be no change (which nobody's going to believe anyways) when you could be saying "yes there will be changes and that's a good thing for you".
I feel the same. The faq reads in summary “nothing is changing, for now” when it should be stating all of the changes that are about to come.
Knowing what I have learned over the last couple of years with changes at google ever since Larry page and pichai took over is that the fun is over and money should now be rolling in. And they are hiding the google effect of this acquisition.
In other words, the project is axed. But the enterprise management is cool. And where google will make their money on this bit.
Also we won’t support old hardware because enterprise does not like old hardware. And it stops people from buying better chromebooks.
Neverware was too good for Google not to kill. If you are a Neverware employee "Thank you" for saving our K-12 10's of thousands of dollars. Great product and great customer support. Good Luck!
I originally assumed that this ran from a USB drive. But it appears that it only boots from USB and then installs itself onto the hard drive. Is that the only option?
Note: CloudReady Home Edition provides the option to “live boot”, running CloudReady directly from a USB device without installing. Live booting has performance and storage limitations and does not support updates, so we recommend that you only use this method temporary testing.
If the CloudReady and Chrome OS Linux distros really merge, both could benefit.
CloudReady never included Android apps due to licensing issues. A merger could bring Android apps to more devices.
Also, CloudReady added native support for installing Flatpaks, which Chrome OS lacks. I imagine if Chrome OS really wanted that on their roadmap they would have added it already, but it would be a welcome addition to Chrome OS if they merge it from CloudReady.
115 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadSo... Yeah, I kind of feel like you're right.
So it sounds like there is some kind of actual migration plan, even if Neverware itself is getting shut down.
Big companies can be come slow-moving risk-adverse creatures that avoid failures by not taking risks.
They've been working pretty closely with the Google ChromeOS team for a while across the consumer, business, and education markets. This deal may be a way for Google to expand the number of devices running ChromeOS.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a big fan of Arch, but there are a lot of reasons to not prefer it over Ubuntu.
I think I can solve both of those with one stone..!
tl;dr - it's fine to snack on potato chips, but don't expect people to all want to eat the same thing. Variety is powerful.
They don't play AAA games, they don't really do administrative work (and the times they do, Google Drive can help), and they can't really break it even if they tried.
You'd be surprised.
They can (and will):
- install crapware extensions
- allow notifications from random shady sites, which will then make them install more crapware extensions
- change their default search engine (and a lot of data that Chrome sends goes to the default search engine, e.g. keystrokes in the address bar)
It doesn't break the OS per se, but it still results in "my computer has a virus" support calls.
https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Does-CloudReady...
It seems like it could potentially really enable massive reuse of older, slower laptops that might otherwise be thrown away.
It seems to me like handling driver support would be the hard part. Is that their special sauce?
I can't see this as anything but a clear win for the environment and for education. And unlike the "Google shuts down everything" meme, this seems so obviously massively helpful to their entire ChromeOS strategy it looks like it'll be here to stay.
So this acquisition likely means a return to old Chromebooks being ewaste because Google bought out the company that was providing a longer lifecycle.
When Google's team decides a computer is too old to support, do you think their other team is going to be allowed to step in and support it?
Google is likely interested in CloudReady for it's newer uses on Windows PCs, I've seen an employer ship a brand new HP laptop with CloudReady on it instead of the OEM Windows license included. But long term support is likely going to suffer.
I’m having trouble interpreting it myself (see the problem?) but I believe it would go something like “I’ve observed some irony: Google used to have the motto «don’t be evil» and what you describe sounds evil.” Feel free to correct it.
/s
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
That's called a punchline.
“ Eventually you will initiate support requests directly with Google in the same way that you do for Chrome OS.”
(Full disclosure, I’ve never actually tried to get support for Chrome OS, but I’m fairly confident in assuming it’s right up to Google’s usual support quality standards...)
Congrats: You are lucky and have well placed confidence.
If you go through the user support it doesn't seem to go anywhere. If you then open a chromium bug like a chrome browser developer would, they will say they got no reports on the user channel and then the bug sheriff will eventually close it.
The main thing I hate about modern software development is the failure to understand one source of truth is incompatible with arbitrarily damaging information to fudge numbers. Virtually everything in their database can be correctly marked a duplicate of something they already closed, automatically, possibly without even reading it.
Forgot about it at some point, I'm glad too to see it's still around! Doubt I'd be in tech or so interested in tinkering or programming or whatever if it weren't for that.
I agree with other commenters that Neverware was bought not for old laptops. It is the supposedly zero-administration of Cloudready that in some CXX targetting PowerPoint looks like that old mainframe/terminal setup or like JavaStation (you stick the badge in and your work environment comes up) - CXX like to cut costs through magic of zero-administration/etc. May be Google will even risk to roll it out internally.
It the re-use of old hardware that might be thrown away it's just potential, it's happening at scale right now.
My mother used a Thinkpad T450 with Cloudready for years. To her it was a Chromebook with a larger screen than her old 11" one.
Imagine, all those upvotes needed to make this a front page article, NONE of those upvoters know what the company is or the context behind it, just that Google did something, so they upvote.
Then you see all these discussion posts about not knowing what it was, and why it's on the front page, etc.
It's basically HN's version of the blind leading the deaf.
I'm one of the people who upvoted this story and am fully aware of Neverware's products. I've actually used their distribution on some old laptops.
I've used cloudready a little bit when I was teaching an introductory class to high school students who I knew all had chromebooks and I wanted to make sure things I was assigning would work on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwhere_(novel)
I CTRL+F'ed through their "about us" page and no mention of Gaiman, either.
Neverware's Chrome OS is a downstream version of the Chrome OS that you get on new Chromebooks.
I do hope that with this acquisition, Neverware's product improves. One chronic problem I have with my pixel chromebook is that I had to disable some security settings to install Neverware's Chrome OS, which causes some problems every time they do an update.
I hated to see it gathering dust in a drawer, so I removed the write-protect screw on the motherboard, blew away the BIOS, and installed a normal BIOS w/ Linux Mint on it. Runs fine. In hindsight I wish I had tracked down the 2015 LS version, since the OG version only has about 4 hours of battery life.
Were you able to get the touch screen working under Linux? How did you install a normal BIOS?
https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices
Be careful when removing the case to get at the write-protect screw, though! Mine was being incredibly stubborn when I tried to get it off, and I unfortunately broke off one of the plastic clips. I was able to get it back on after a few attempts and there's no longer an air-gap between the lid and the board, but I can unfortunately hear the broken clip rattling around when I carry the laptop.
I personally think they will. In a time when many schools are short of money, it makes sense to allow deployment of Chrome OS to existing hardware. Allows Google to expand Chrome OS's base while working within budgets that don't allow for mass purchases of new machines.
For those looking to try Chrome OS on their personal equipment, there's not only Neverware, but there's also the Brunch Project. The Brunch Project uses the official Chrome OS images and provides a way to install them. Neverware sometimes lacked certain features because of their use of Chromium OS, but the Brunch Project avoids that problem by using the official images.
https://sites.google.com/view/brunch-project/downloads
I’m now imagining the announcement to existing support contract users.
“Your account has been migrated to Google’s legendary customer support platform. To receive support, ensure you’re logged in using your paid support email address. Google search will then unlock enhanced Chrome OS problem search mode, allowing you to find other user’s workarounds to your problems! In the event this does not solve your issue, please scream into the void as usual. Our support staff will get back to you never.“
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-web-remix/19394
I wouldn't be surprised to see someone attempt a Chrome OS clone at a startup or corporate level. Seems like all the building blocks are there. Someone just needs to assemble it. Simple desktop that revolves around Firefox. With an immutable base system and seamless, invisible-to-the-end-user containers.
What to do when they end support...
as it is, you can keep using the old hardware after support ends, you'll just have an outdated browser and linux kernel. In the future, that problem should be reduced to just having an outdated kernel.
With that said though -- yes, if you're into modding or general preservation there are a variety of community spins of Android, and potentially even a small scattering of other Linux-based systems depending on your device.
Now that Android requires the use of a GSI -- or generic system image -- in testing, device compatibility is also significantly better than it used to be. That said, you're still limited to those that support bootloader unlocking. (Notably, while they don't implement this internationally, if you're US-based Samsung is out.) Additionally, GSIs will still have edge cases around drivers (since they don't have to actually work on production devices), Google apps generally have to be loaded separately, and even then the act of opening your bootloader to begin with trips SafetyNet -- which breaks everything from banking apps (for the sensitive-data protections this was originally intended to cover) to Netflix (for DRM) to various games (for anti-cheat) to... Snapchat for some reason?
Where this starts to really get exciting is that, over the next year or two, that requirement for generic image compatibility will be extending to the kernel, on devices that are actually shipping to users. Treble's launch triggered a sort of second wave within the custom ROM scene, as it meant they no longer strictly needed to be ported to devices on an individual basis -- a limitation which up until now has still existed for the kernel.
Some particularly interesting details around this are that a custom kernel is required to run Halium (a GNU compatibility layer for Android devices that allows images like Ubuntu Touch to be loaded as GSIs), and that Android 11 can actually boot on a minimally-patched mainline assuming that all necessary drivers exist.
I hope Google does not intend to shut them down.
I've used CloudReady to turn old laptops that would otherwise be junked into Chromebooks, adding years to their life for family members that needed very low maintenance simple laptop like a Chromebook.
It will be a shame environmentally if it becomes harder to rehab old laptops like this in the future.
They're getting axed in a year, two if they're lucky.
I know an acquired company cannot ever say with any certainty or conviction “things won’t change!”, so it’s kinda as honest as I suspect legal has allowed them to be.
If I were responsible for a fleet of Neverware devices, I’d be immediately fast tracking investigations into suitable alternatives and migration plans.
EDIT: Like, it doesn't even have to be a bad thing! Sell it! Go hog with "we're integrating processes to make the product better for users" and "this will let us ship updates faster" and "you'll get more features now that we're an official Google product" (Android support, hopefully). There's no reason to go with this absurd premise that there will be no change (which nobody's going to believe anyways) when you could be saying "yes there will be changes and that's a good thing for you".
Knowing what I have learned over the last couple of years with changes at google ever since Larry page and pichai took over is that the fun is over and money should now be rolling in. And they are hiding the google effect of this acquisition.
In other words, the project is axed. But the enterprise management is cool. And where google will make their money on this bit.
Also we won’t support old hardware because enterprise does not like old hardware. And it stops people from buying better chromebooks.
Note: CloudReady Home Edition provides the option to “live boot”, running CloudReady directly from a USB device without installing. Live booting has performance and storage limitations and does not support updates, so we recommend that you only use this method temporary testing.
https://guide.neverware.com/supported-devices/
CloudReady never included Android apps due to licensing issues. A merger could bring Android apps to more devices.
Also, CloudReady added native support for installing Flatpaks, which Chrome OS lacks. I imagine if Chrome OS really wanted that on their roadmap they would have added it already, but it would be a welcome addition to Chrome OS if they merge it from CloudReady.