Interesting observation. I don't particularly care if the Chromebook succeeds or not, but I wholeheartedly agree that the trend towards wider and wider (i.e. shorter and shorter) screens was terrible. In addition to all the valid points I'm seeing other people make here, it's also worth noting that the move to widescreens has enabled manufacturers to ship displays that, based on their diagonal measurement, a customer would think are larger than their non-widescreens when they're actually the same size or even smaller. For example, a 47" 4:3 screen has the same area as a 50" 16:9 screen.