If you’ve been a part of the Chromebook story for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard about the three pillars of the core Chrome OS experience: speed, simplicity, and security. From the jump, Google had a vision of computing that put these three things front and center, allowing them to steer the ship and correct course when needed as Chrome OS has undergone 89 6-week updates to this point. Have they always executed things perfectly? Of course not, but they have done a great job at letting those three pillars drive ongoing changes to an ever-expanding operating system that has become far more capable than it was 10 years ago at launch.
As we all know from life experience, the more capability you add to anything, the more mess and complexity follows. It’s the same with software and hardware: the more features, settings, and abilities our Chromebooks gain, the more prone they become to getting bogged down by all the complexity that is necessary with all the added benefits. Take Discord for an example. If you’ve not used it, I highly recommend it as a chat app and productivity tool for teams or groups. We use it for internal communication and for our Patreon community and I love it. However, when it’s time to set up a new room, new rule or new role for a user, you quickly notice that Discord has gained a boatload of features and abilities over time that have come at the cost of simplicity. It is wildly full-featured and the UI sometimes gets lost in the weeds of all that ability.
