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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

I haven't seen any suggestion that Chromebooks are somehow directly subsidized by Google - are Samsung, Toshiba, etc. getting some kind of kickbacks for making and selling the hardware? ChromeOS itself is free to license for vendors [1] But most have fairly low-end CPUs, not much RAM, and small SSDs, so I don't think they compete with Apple for features, per se.

1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Sales_and_marketing

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I think you answered your own question:

  > ChromeOS itself is free to license for vendors

If it's free, it's for a reason.

That same logic applies to the Linux kernel, right?

Not really, the linux is a volunteer effort spearheaded by a non-profit where members take advantage of the advance of the kernel for their own products/ideals, while Google is very much a for-profit corporation which benefits here by the increase in users for their services. Services which are ad-supported for the most part.

Chrome OS is not open source.

Chromium OS is, though.

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os

yeah but how many of these K-12 educational chromebooks are going to get that installed on them? these just allow google to start tracking people even earlier in life than they may have otherwise been able to.

Student chromebooks are not tracked

Once again, in what manner are these Chromebooks tracking people more than alternatives would? And I take it from your comment that you're implying Chromium OS tracks people less?

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