Chromebooks

Here I am, blogging, (a Google service) on an Android (Google) device. It's fair to say, Google pretty much own the internet. Their services are usually well thought out, easy to use, functional and well integrated with both software and hardware.
My speciality is video. What's the first thing you think of when you think of video? YouTube, of course, a Google operated channel. So what's the best machine for creating YouTube content? Surely a Google machine? A Chromebook or Chromebox, no?

No. Absolutely not.

You see the weird thing is, although the Chromebooks are great machines, for organising files, great for synchronising your calendars with your android devices, great for managing your photo collections via Google photos, great for listening to music stored in your Google play account, great for spreadsheets and presentations using sheets or slides, and managing all of those things via cloud storage in your Google drive, they are without a doubt the worse choice for creating  digital video content. Out of the box they simply will not do it.
It's bewildering when you think about it. A Mac comes with imovie.
Which means trawling through the marketplace for options. The best option having tried many, seems to be WeVideo, which is surprisingly capable for a server side option.
All of your video clips are uploaded from your SD card, via your Chromebook to WeVideo, you edit the video through an imovie-like interface (in chrome) but all the heavy rendering work is done back end, not on your local machine. So it works quite effectively. Even if uploading your raw video files can be very time consuming.
But here's the catch. It ain't free. It's not software provided by Google, and hence you either end up with a stonking great big watermark over your videos, or you bite the bullet and pay an annual subscription. No disrespect to the developers, they've got to make a living.
It just strikes me as odd. That the company behind the biggest video website in the world can be behind the only computer on the market that doesn't allow it's users to create digital video content. Not only easily, but pretty much at all.

If you're in the market for a new computer, bear in mind this one monumental drawback. Although YouTube does allow simple edits (once a file is uploaded, it's clunky and extremely limited) it's way of anything useable for even the most lightweight vlogger (video blogger for those of you unfamiliar with the term).
It's also impossible for schools to use to teach their pupils. Why? Because YouTube is blocked by most local education authorities.

If you're in the market for a lightweight, totally competent very, very easy to use machine, then knock yourself out. Chromebooks are great value for money. Just not if you're ever likely to need it to edit video.

Perhaps Google will buy WeVideo, perhaps they'll brand it Google, make it smarter and remove the watermark. But even if they did, it still wouldn't be the best machine for video editing, no serious (or even casual) YouTube content creator would consider a Google machine and that just seems ridiculous.

Come on Google, show us your A game.