Mark Bergen, writing for Re/code about Google folding Chrome OS into Android:

Perhaps the critical reason Google is favoring Android is its birthplace: Mobile phones. The greatest threat to the Alphabet company is that its revenue, derived largely from desktop advertising, will dwindle as smartphone usage spreads. If it’s done anything this year (save the whole Alphabet thing), Google has manically reiterated that it does, in fact, have a cohesive plan for mobile. A chief Android distinction from Chrome is that it is built for mobile behavior.

A vote for Android is, in some ways, a tacit admission that Google must devote its attention to the devices on which it lives.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS, and Chromecast has since claimed that “Chrome OS is here to stay,” but his statement reads more like “we will continue to support Chrome OS in its current form for the foreseeable future.” That’s hardly a denial of the Wall Street Journal’s report.