When Google was working on the first Chromebook, they decided to give away some prototype Chromebooks to developers for free. There was a web form to request one. A small portion of the requests were granted.

But they also took a more targeted approach: If you appeared to be a frequent user of the Dev release channel of Chrome (unstable), an offer would appear on the New Tab page to immediately claim a prototype Chromebook for free.

I only know this because that’s how I got mine. A coworker of mine was interested in developing a ChromeOS app, tried switching to the Chrome Dev channel like me, and received a similar offer in a few days.

It was great targeting. We both ended up making ChromeOS-specific improvements to a popular web app. When you compare this to the cost of paying a company to port their app to your platform, this was a good deal for them.