Developers can continue to build Chrome apps and eventually Android apps for Chrome OS, when Google Play store is brought to Chrome OS. However, I agree there is the problem of losing incentive to maintain a native Chrome app from the developer POV.
I have the same problem. Then there are so many tabs and I have to use a Chrome extension to automatically save and close inactive tabs. Guess I should set some time to look at that limbo place.
I am under the impression that a large part of engineering effort at established companies go into porting existing components to a deemed to be more appropriate language for that task.
Is it plain impossible to pick the best fit language without implementing a solution in the first place and fleshing out the requirements and challenges that specific to the problem space? Or do the problems evolve fast enough that no matter how well you design the system, it will need to be deprecated once in a few years?
I also thought of Valve when reading that sentence. Being anarchic is a compelling idea. There are some conditions to be met though. You would need highly autonomous people who have good grab of the big picture to drive the group forward.