Steam for Chromebooks is getting axed in 2026 instead of exiting its 4-year beta

Honestly I think that's the constant problem of every "low cost computer" setup that comes out. They start out with an understanding of what they are... a cheap disposable alternative for doing the basics, after getting some momentum in that they cry about the lack of profit margins, keep adding to it to justify pricing them the same as regular laptops, but at the fundamental level do far less and they don't sell for crap at that price.

Like say netbooks, it's so commonly assumed the ipad killed the netbook... as a former netbook owner I disagree. I bought an acer aspire 1 when they were on sale for like $100, it was a really low powered, basic windows system. If I recall it was running win XP in the vista era. For me it was a good choice, a nice note taking, word document writing and basic web browsing computer with a decent battery life, and tiny enough to slip in a bag with little work.

I worked at staples at the time, and if I recall they were around $200 regular price, but frequently on sale for 100-150, and when they went on sale they sold like hotcakes. They had other netbooks in the 300-500 price range... I don't think I ever saw one sell, and to this day I don't get the appeal. You'd need more hardware if you were say, editing graphics... or playing games, or doing something more complex, but why would you do those things on a 10" screen. Same price you could buy a real laptop, bit bigger, but more importantly a comfortable screen size and a full sized keyboard. So in short, the netbooks went from a cheap option that can do the the main fundimentals of a PC slightly worse, for 1/3rd the price. To a... laptop that could do 80% of what a laptop can, on an uncomfortably tiny screen, for 100% of the price.

around the same time the ipad came out... for $500, the netbooks shifted their focus, more and more models in the $300-$700 price range. Nebooks shifted to being what I would effectively describe as... small little boxes, that do most of what a laptop does, much worse with a tiny screen.... for the same price, maybe a bit more when comparing spec for spec.

Honestly i see the same with chromebooks. So you've got chromeos, which has less general computer support than regular linux. Can't run MS office, slightly lesser game support. No special form factor or advantage for games like say the steam deck etc... No matter how you slice it you've got a computer, designed to do... say 70% of what you can on a regular laptop... for the price of... a regular laptop.