We've yet to find anyone associated with Chrome OS who even knew Jeff Nelson existed. Perhaps there is someone, but there are few people left who could possibly fit that profile. Who's more senior than the original developers, Sundar Pichai?
The indirect relationships I posit doesn't even require anyone to remember Nelson's name, just for the chain-of-organizational-learning to exist.
I don't know anything about the Google org chart. But when Google OS was a project -- and Google financed the Nelson patent application -- who was he describing his work to? Did any of those people, or even people they passed ideas to, later help make the decision to prioritize/fund Chrome OS? If so, that's more than "absolutely no connection".
Did Brin/Page/Schmidt take interest in and see presentations about Nelson's 'Google OS'? And then later on 'Chrome OS'? That would also be more than "absolutely no connection".
Even if the 'Google OS' project was a mess and the main lesson that percolated down from it was, "don't do it this way", it could have been an important precedent... even if Nelson's name is forgotten. That "there are few people left" who might have personal recollections cuts both ways.
Note that these are all general arguments about evaluating why people's impressions differ, and how in founding disputes everyone may have a reasonable basis for their claims based on their own limited perspectives. I don't have specific knowledge of Nelson or these Google projects, and on the internet, exaggerations, hoaxes, and identity-games are always a possibility.
