When I tore apart my gen1 Chromebook, I was surprised at how little hardware was actually in there. I hadn't expected much apart from a wifi card and a flash drive... but still it was minimal.<p>Now with Stadia going full blown streaming I wonder if this is just a monetizable prototype for a thin client technology for a leaner versio of Chromebook/ GSuite (cringe) businesses.<p>Someone else made an awesome Sun Microsystems post that made me hypothesize.
SunRays didn't work out too hot for Sun.<p>Local processing will always be relevant for minimizing latency. An SoC that can comfortably manage the amount of compute that is needed for everyday office productivity costs pennies today. Outside of very specialized applications, there isn't a strong engineering argument for clients that much "thinner" than a web browser.<p>Whole-application streaming is a solution looking for a problem, and I'm extremely dubious of Stadia.
I think it is pretty obvious that this is their long-term plan. Funnel all computing activities that could be happening locally into their private little cloud.