Nilay Patel
Editor-in-chief of The Verge, which he co-founded in 2011, covering consumer technology, platforms and the policy around them.
“Google was absolutely right that they would take over, in particular, the Windows app model. They just crushed it. It's gone. Like we do not talk about native Windows apps ever.”
Version History · October 2026
The hosts were deciding whether Google's first Chromebook prototype changed history. Patel's case is that the hardware didn't matter but the idea did: most people now run a browser and a handful of native apps. He does note one exception, a recent revival of native Mac apps driven by AI-assisted development.
Transcript
I just, here's what I'm just gonna, I'm gonna give my moment in the side. I think the Version History Hall of Fame has room in it for but one Chromebook, and it's not this one.
That's fair. I actually, I think I, I think I agree with that. Um, it's the pixel book. I'm glad we've discussed this. This is great. It's the forthcoming Google book. Um, all right, so it fails the test, but we have one more question, which is, did it change history? Is there a world before this and a world after it? I think this one's in my book actually kind of an easy yes. I think there is, you, you can make a pretty easy case that this changed the nature of computing and the way that the kinds of devices that we use, what we expect from our computers, where the apps live. You and I talk all the time about where the apps are. This definitely pushed ahead the idea that apps can be in the web.
Google was 100% right about the core ideas of the Chromebook, right? There's an odd renaissance of Mac apps right now, like native Mac apps right now, because of AI-driven software development. Super interesting. But if that hadn't happened, the idea that we would run native Mac or Windows apps outside of really compute intensive things like video editing is gone. Most people do not run native apps on their computers in any way. They run their browser and then they have Spotify or like whatever other native app on their computer. And I think that's just utterly fascinating. And Google was absolutely right that they would take over, in particular, the Windows app model. They just crushed it. It's gone. Like we do not talk about native Windows apps ever. Marquez, what was the last native Windows app you ran?
Native Windows app? It's been years since I did that. You see what I'm saying?
Like, even Microsoft Office is a web app. Like, it's crazy how right Google was about where the applications would live. And so just on that alone, you're like, yeah, this changed the world. Yeah.
Marquez, what do you think? Any objection?
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