How Google is bringing Windows apps to Chromebooks

Google revealed earlier this year that it's planning to support Windows applications on Chromebooks thanks to a partnership with Parallels. It's a collaboration that will see a full version of Windows boot inside Chrome OS, providing businesses the option to run existing desktop apps on Google's range of lightweight Chromebook devices. In an exclusive interview with The Verge, Google is now detailing how and why Windows apps are arriving on Chrome OS.

Google wants to give you access to Windows apps when you really need them, as a hop in and out experience. The analogy I give is that yes, the world is all state of the art and Dolby Atmos home theaters, but every once in a while you do have that old wedding video on a VHS that you need to get to," says Cyrus Mistry, group product manager for Chrome OS. We want to make sure you have that option [for Windows apps] as well... so that every once in a while you'll be able to get that when you need it, but we don't want that to be the world you're living in."

This feels very much like a stopgap measure designed specifically for enterprises relying on old internal Win32 applications. For employees of such companies, Chromebooks - or anything that isn't Windows - simply isn't an option, but this might fix that.

Still, I doubt this will perform great.