Google’s ChromeOS is the Rodney Dangerfield of modern operating systems: It’s been around for ages now, and it pops up in all sorts of unexpected places. No matter how hard it works, though — boy, oh boy — it just can’t get no respect.
Much like Dangerfield, ChromeOS’s struggle to be taken seriously dates back to its childhood. When the software first entered the universe in the simpler tech times of 2010, it truly was a barebones effort. The entire platform was essentially just a browser in a box — a full-screen view of Google’s Chrome browser, with no real apps to speak of and not much else around it.