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Marco Arment from Instapaper thinks that Chrome OS will have limited appeal for consumers, will target businesses and not be well-received there due to lack of proper enterprise support and commitment. Here are a few quotes from Marco:

Google’s targeting of Chrome OS is interesting. Rather than trying to attract consumers, who have demonstrated that they’re not interested in “Net PC”-like browser-only hardware, Google is positioning Chrome OS hardware as inexpensive, low-IT-overhead alternatives for businesses to deploy instead of desk computers.

In last week’s Talk Show, John Gruber and Dan Benjamin discussed why it may finally be a good time for this: a lot of computers today in businesses exist solely to run a web browser. John’s example is almost every computer in a typical bank branch, on which the agents usually just type your information into a series of web-browser forms in order to do their jobs.

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Google’s just not in the business of providing long-term support for an unsuccessful product line. It’s part of what allows them to keep releasing new things all the time while geeks declare Microsoft a boring old dinosaur. But IT departments need their platform vendors to behave much more like Microsoft.

I doubt many corporate IT execs are going to take the risk that Chrome OS will be a stable enough long-term platform to deploy to their companies’ workforces. As the saying goes, nobody ever got fired…

Interesting enough, I actually agree with the second part of the argument but not with the initial premise.

Yes, getting businesses to commission big desktop refreshes to Google is going to be a challenge and require good field execution to get the early adopters buy into the value proposition (and then serve as a case study to persuade the others). And I think existing Google Apps adoption and progress demonstrates that Google’s execution when pitching to the enterprise is underwhelming. Just think on how much earlier on the market they got compared to Microsoft’s BPOS/Office 365 and how they almost missed this advantage.

However, obviously, even if not that many enterprises adopt Google Apps and Chrome OS – the reality is that these will create a headache for Microsoft because they will be used as a threat buy Microsoft’s enterprise customers when negotiating a better deal on their Microsoft contracts…

The real success of the OS though is likely going to depend on the consumer adoption (iPad was never pitched as an enterprise tool – but companies are increasingly looking to using it as such). So let’s look at the possible consumer play of the technology.

And here, I do not agree that ‘consumers … have demonstrated that they’re not interested in “Net PC”-like browser-only hardware’. Consumers are not interested when you give them a crappy netbook with an impossible to use Linux. There is little doubt about that. However, this does not mean that consumers are attached to Windows fat apps either. Success of iPads is a clear demonstration that consumers can live with total breakage of compatibility with old apps as long as the device is great and the new apps ecosystem is good.

If the application marketplace which Google is launching for Chrome OS is good – it will be just fine with consumers. Especially with supported offline mode and printing. I am using TweetDeck Chrome app in my Chrome browser today and it is just a great application. Much better, faster and easier to maintain than the AIR version I used before. If apps, hardware and pricepoints are there – consumers will come.

And yes, Ray Ozzie is right: applications on any devices are these days becoming a local representation and cache of something server or cloud-side. This is already true for a lot of iPhone and Android applications – so web-based application framework with good access to local resources is fine. Which then makes it a question of whether Google can make the Chrome OS the device operating platform of choice for the range of devices and longer term replacement of Android. And this is a question of competing for the hearts and minds of consumers and developers – and not really a question of a “Net PC” being something that resonates with consumers.

And I have no idea whether or not Chrome OS devices require cheaper hardware than Android devices. I am not sure I see why they would – consumers would probably still want solid-state drives, nice-looking form-factor, touch screens, cameras and other things which make the devices more expensive – so what’s the difference?

The future is in the cloud. Whether this “cloud” means Chrome OS remains to be seen.