Google Play Starts Bringing Android Apps To Chromebooks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: As promised, Google has finally brought the Google Play store to Chrome OS. Android apps, Android games, and media content from the store are all now finally available on Chromebooks running the latest stable build. But that still doesn't mean all Chromebook owners can use the store. This continues to be a gradual rollout -- even on the stable channel, Google is limiting the launch in multiple ways. "A beta release of the Play store is available to users now on the Acer R11 and Asus Flip (and coming soon to Pixel 2015) and can be enabled from the Settings page," a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. "The team is hard at work making the experience great for users before making the Play Store available by default on these Chromebooks." That's right -- even though we're still talking about just three devices, the Play store is disabled by default. Once you've updated to version 53.0.2785.129 (make sure to switch back to the stable channel if you aren't already on it), you'll have to enable the Play Store in Chrome Settings.

Re:

[darkain]

And you thought they were NOT already doing this with "GOOGLE Chrome OS" !?

So where's the killer chromebooks?

[night]

Now that you can run an android app in a window and that android phones are now coming with nice CPU, GPU, and 4GB ram. Where are the killer chromebooks?

8-16GB ram, 13-14" 1080P screen, and a decent GPU if you want to play the occasional android game. Maybe the Iris 540.

Eventual Android/Chrome OS merger

[ChunderDownunder]

Pixel C was rumoured to originally be a Chrome OS device but no one would buy a tablet without app support.

This feature uses Wayland, which would open itself up to desktop programs if Google exposed more of its Gentoo underpinnings to the end user. (yes, I hear there's Crouton.)

What about permissions?

[penguinoid]

Will the apps still require access to your contacts, camera, and the soul of your firstborn child?

Or perhaps there's a chance that the personal computer mindframe finally leaks onto the (belongs to the carrier) smartphone mindframe.

Re:

[KozmoStevnNaut]

But unfortunately no Acer Chromebook 13, even though it has an ARM processor (Nvidia Tegra K1) :-(

Only for recent Chromebooks

[tlhIngan]

Google's compatibility list [chromium.org] shows it's only for recent (under 2 year old) Chromebooks. It's not that the older Chromebooks are too slow or anything, they just are older than 2 years old. After all, the list excludes many x86 based Chromebooks (including Google's original Pixel).

proxy

[Minors]

Everything is good, but would be better if they took care of ensuring the normal operation of proxy servers on this platform. With my [advanced.name] proxy provider it is not compatible.

The new beta

[redback]

Limited release is the new beta.

Google, get your act together

[OneHundredAndTen]

It is about time that you guys fix (among other things) the Google Play Store app auto-update feature, which has a way to work erratically, if at all, in many Android devices. Only searches reveal that Google engineers do not seem to understand what is going, always resorting to voodoo suggestions: clean this cache, and see if that solves the problem. If not, do this, that and the other. If still no cigar, do a hard reset of the device. Excuse me?!? A hard reset because you people do not know what is going