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.

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.

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.

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.

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