<p>It's deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra might say: A few years ago netbooks were the latest craze, and now it's the Chromebook. At a time when PC sales are falling, Google (GOOG) Chromebooks are a bright spot, with NPD Group's Stephen Baker forecasting 10 percent growth in 2013, says Bloomberg News. Low prices, which powered netbook sales, are probably a big reason for growing Chromebook sales as well. Could the market for Chromebooks quickly tank, as it did for netbooks? I doubt it.</p><p>It's easy to find further similarities between Chromebooks and netbooks. They're both smaller than traditional laptops, are lightweight, and often run for six or more hours on a single charge. These features helped Chromebooks account for from 20 percent to 25 percent of the sub-$300 laptop market in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2013, according to NPD's data. Significant differences between the two devices, however, make me more optimistic about this trend.</p><p>Netbooks were designed to help sell more Intel (INTC) chips and Windows (MSFT) licenses while giving consumers a more portable computing device than the heavy, bulky laptop. They ran Windows XP, which worked well on the low-powered chips. Bland at first, designs quickly improved as PC makers jumped into the fast-growing market. But they weren't really an innovative new device: Netbooks offered the traditional WinTel experience in a small, low-priced form factor.</p><p>The Chromebook is a different beast, though few realize it. The common thought is that the devices are "just a browser," which is far too simplistic a view. I've already explained why, in detail: Chrome, the most used browser, and Chrome OS for Chrome devices are together a platform of Google's own making, complete with support for stand-alone Web apps, hardware access, and software originally coded in traditional programming languages.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-16/how-chromebooks-can-escape-the-netbooks-fate">Keep reading...</a></p>