Users and maintainers

Users and maintainers

I don't think that, realistically, Google's goal is to replace every single PC in existence with a machine running Chromium OS. (They probably wouldn't mind if that happened but hey, I'd like a pony, too.) There are still loads of people around who haven't touched a computer for their entire lives so far, and so have no preconceived notion of how software should look like and behave. If Google manages to rope in just an appreciable fraction of those they'll be more than comfortable for a user community.

Also, people are moving in droves from their local mail programs to Google Mail in a browser already. As it turns out, Google Mail is kinda slick. And if e-mail and web surfing are the main things they do on their computer, which again holds true for a fairly significant number of people, Google's approach will probably be just fine for them.