They're actually pretty nice hardware, and spec wise it's kind of a tweener. Trying to get 16GB of RAM in Macbook is much more expensive and if this had a bit more local storage (which can be augmented by flash) I think it would compete nicer (especially the 8GB one). I think the touchscreen adds to the price and until I use it for a bit I can't really say I'm going to use it that much so it's probably mostly wasted. But the 12 hour battery and very fast ChromeOS (which for most of what I do is enough) is actually really nice. And to have something that isn't just made out of plastic just feels good to use.
What other laptop is made of solid materials, has 16GB RAM, an all day battery (something more than 6hrs) and a high resolution touchscreen close to this price? If this had more than 64GB of SSD people might actually mistake it for a "real" laptop. And the $999 version is actually pretty competitive in that price range as well, again neglecting the local storage, so tack on an extra $150 or so for a big SD card to compensate.
Chromebooks get kind of a bad rap in that they're "just for browsing" but many developers just throw them in developer mode and they're actually kind of nice hardware (for Linux work). I just wish they'd figure out a way to let you put crouton on it without having to throw it in developer mode.
If the 8GB version had a bit more local storage, I think quite a few developers would consider them, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what they're supposed to be about which is cloud computing.
And of course I'm as much of a Google fan as many people are with Apple so there's that. But really, I've really liked my Samsung Series 3 and just wanted something a bit nicer and not Apple.
Plus you get 1TB of drive storage for 3 years which at current rate ends up being ~$300 right there, not that you couldn't get storage other places.
I think the device is overpriced, but not as much really for what you get, but I've also grown to have an affinity for Chromebooks.