Image: Scott Akerman/Flickr
Google wants to clear up "some confusion" brought about by a Wall Street Journal report last week suggesting the company was looking to ditch Chrome OS for Android as the operating system for its inexpensive line of laptops known as Chromebooks.The company on Monday said it had "no plan to phase out Chrome OS," but did admit that it has "been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems." Google did not elaborate what these "ways" might be, or why it was looking to "bring together" the two operating systems in the first place."With the launch of Chrome OS six years ago, we set out to make computers better—faster, simpler and more secure—for everyone," said Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast, who then went on to claim that schools in the US activate 30,000 new Chromebooks every day. Lockheimer then noted that "dozens of new Chromebooks" would be released in 2016.The original Wall Street Journal report, published on October 29, suggested that Google had been spending the past two years working to combine Android and Chrome OS after it became clear that Android had become the more popular of the two operating systems. The Journal noted that replacing Chrome OS with Android was part of Google's strategy to get its mobile operating system onto as many devices as possible.The dream of Android running on a laptop isn't entirely dead, though. The Pixel C, Google's Microsoft Surface-like hybrid tablet/laptop, will run Android and is expected to be released before the end of the year. That means that, out of the book, it will have access to the more than 1.6 million Android apps that are currently available, according to Statista.