Googlebooks are explicitly designed to be the Macs for a legion of Android fanatics. The company is finally revealing exactly what’s going on, and I went hands-on with every single new design coming next month. Beyond the higher-end specs, AI capabilities, and the odd AI-filled cursor, I was left with one thought: it’s all about the apps.
“We want Android users to get a laptop that’s intuitive,” Alex Kuscher, Google’s lead project manager in charge of tablets and laptops, said in a press conference. The key to that is the very Apple-like continuity features when using both a laptop and an Android phone. With Googlebooks, you can start an app like Gmail on your phone, realize you need a keyboard, and then open up the native laptop application with all your progress synced.
Not all apps are equal on Googlebooks. All the regular Google Workspace apps are designed to run natively on Googlebook. However, sometimes, when you want to load up an app like Grubhub, instead of displaying on your laptop, it instead appears using “App Cast,” where the phone’s display is duplicated on your larger screen. Like Apple’s iPhone mirroring feature, you can still use your keyboard and mouse cursor to manipulate the app. Google has said it’s looking to work with developers to increase the number of apps made for the big screen experience.
When Google established its Chromebook brand, it imagined its new devices as the true low-end alternative to PCs with better-than-average battery life and the promise they would “just work.” Googlebooks, on the other hand, are higher-end devices that try to claim the kinds of hardier metal chassis and bright screens popularized thanks to the $700 MacBook Neo.
These are not your barebones plastic clamshells you’d find going for $300 to $500 on the bottom shelf of Best Buy. These new laptops will start at $900, though considering today’s RAM prices, that probably won’t last long. The new Acer Googlebook 14 is one of the few models that actually hits that sub-$1,000 price point. However, Acer lists that Best Buy price as a “limited time offer.” Other laptop makers, like Asus, Lenovo, and HP, are all selling their first Chromebook models for $1,300. Dell, with its new XPS Googlebook, will set its price at $1,200.
Furthermore, all these new laptops are sporting just two chip varieties. The XPS Chromebook and the HP Googlebook 14 will rely on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip. The Lenovo Googlebook 15, Acer Googlebook 14, and Asus Googlebook 14 (very original naming, I know) will all pack in an Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chip. I’ve put together a more detailed breakdown of the various laptop models here.
More than any processor or pretty OLED screen, it will be the all-new GooglebookOS that will determine if Google’s new mode of laptop sinks or swims. The new operating system is literally made up of pieces from both ChromeOS and Android, as explained by Prajakta “PJ” Gudadhe, Google’s VP of Engineering. The new software is running a custom Linux kernel optimized for both the x86 microarchitecture used by Intel and the ARM-based chips developed by Qualcomm.
The actual desktop is very reminiscent of ChromeOS but with significant differences. The first are the new widgets that will likely remind you of Android. Google actually wants you to design your own custom widgets using a chatbot-like prompt. I saw how the Create My Widget beta could manage your planned flight times and set it up in the traditional Material 3 Expressive design language. These widgets will also change in color depending on your choice of desktop theme, just like the latest versions of ChromeOS.
And there are other AI features besides. The one you might encounter most is called Magic Pointer. Essentially, by wiggling the mouse, your computer plays a psychedelic animation very akin to Circle to Search on Android. Here, you can point out multiple elements of your screen and tell the AI to do some sort of agentic task, like saving multiple messages as a single calendar event or checking if that rogue email in your inbox is legit or not.
The wiggle function doesn’t come up at random times. In fact, I felt like I had to really wiggle the hell out of the cursor to bring it up. Google told me users will be able to customize the amount of waggles before Magic Pointer comes up. There are a few other controls that immediately bring up AI, such as the Chromebook Plus Quick Insert key to bring up Rambler. It’s a Gemini Live-like interface where you can talk to your laptop’s Gemini model to have it do tasks on your behalf.
Beyond all these AI features, what will actually help Googlebooks succeed is native apps. At launch, Google promises there are hundreds of apps that work natively, including “50 of the top 100” best-selling games on the Google Play Store. However, Google knows that it needs to get more working on its Android/Linux hybrid OS. Google’s timing makes a lot of sense, considering how miffed Windows 11 users have been lately. Now it’s time to see if Google’s laptops can be more than a mere Chromebook with better Android integration.
Source: Gizmodo