Not lighter than Air, but cheaper.

Six of the Chromebooks is about the same cost
as one well-equipped MacBook Air. 

So, you lose a highly public battle with a major competitor (and consumer) of your products, to the tune of over a billion dollars? How do you retaliate?

You develop an answer to one of their most prized $1000 items — and sell it for $249.

That's what Samsung has done, in conjunction with Google. The ChromeBook looks an awful lot like the MacBook Air but sells for a quarter of the price. I'm sure there are some key differences in capabilities between CB and the MBA, but there is probably a huge market out there for a Web-oriented computer that costs the same as only about sixty lattes.