Indeed, very good points. Chrome OS is not a new concept per say, but a novel implementation. But directly to your ponts:

a. It seems with the popularity of services like Google Docs, Gmail, and many, many others, individuals are more less worried about the potential privacy than they feel about the benefits of this convenience.

b. This is also somewhat less of a concern with always improving services, and redundancy in many cases (mobile data, and wired). Once upon a time one could have said the very same about electricity, certainly when it goes out, we're at a stand still. I would be interested to know the broadband reliability based on area.

Another point worth consideration is the offline capabilities of HTML 5 which can be implemented by developers to provide offline usage. How much this feature will be used remains to be seen!

c. This is a power-user feature, but I suspect that Chrome OS is positioned towards the lay person. However, having a service in the 'cloud' doesn't necessary imply little customizability; it all depends on the service. Again, there exists the possibility that power-users can install their own home-servers and serve secure apps.

I think that Chrome OS is still a little early in that there are few apps, but the Google Chrome App store, not only puts apps in a central location for discovery, it monetizes them and provides developer incentive. The reach of the web, the standardization of the web, the extreme proliferation of web servers, and the inclusion of the Chrome App Store, are all features worth notation when comparing this to the thin client concept of old.

I personally believe that this is the future. Ask any regular user what they do on their computer, and they'll generally remark: web surfing, word-processing, music listening, and possibly movie watching. The web can do all of these things, and Chrome OS will push these services and more directly into the users awareness.

If I was confident that I could run Ubuntu from a centralized server, and have access to its apps via a web interface, I would quickly hop on Chrome OS, and get a reasonably powerful central home computer. Performance is my only concern as this sounds very VNC-ish. Of course, if popular projects port to NaCl, I wouldn't hesitate. Having access to my apps via a cheap, thin laptop with excellent battery life, and a convenient tablet, is a very compelling idea.

I'm very confident in one thing, though: Microsoft is fsck'd.