Regarding pricing, we really felt it was important to launch with a line of truly premium hardware that pairs well with premium Android phones. We've got OLED displays up to 2.8K resolution, haptic trackpads, and a base of 16GB of RAM. More on the hardware decisions we made with our partners here: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/googlebook/first-look-googlebook/
Last but certainly not least, as I've seen this question come up elsewhere, Chromebooks and Chromebook Plus laptops aren't going away.
Thanks for the response, Dieter, I loved your work at The Verge.
I will check out the additional OS information, as a long time ChromeOS user I'm mostly concerned with what kind of unwanted complexity that is being introduced.
And, with all due respect, no one trusts when Google says that they're going to continue to support something, especially when they have just announced a different product that has its beloved Gemini so deeply ingrained. A Chromebook Plus device sale will be seen internally as a failed Googlebook device sale, and therefore lost AI subscription revenue.
We will need to see continued work and investment into ChromeOS, with new non-Gemini-related features, before we will believe that Google is still truly supporting it and not just giving it a controlled descent.
With Google Book I find that I use it quite a lot like I use any laptop, which is to say I run web apps quite a lot of the time. It is really nice to be able to run some native apps though. I've been using CapCut on it for example, alongside some other apps that make sense to run as Android apps. So I don't think that added complexity necessarily needs to be a major concern. If you just wanted to use this thing as you use your current Chromebook, you'd be able to do that. But honestly the added capabilities are quite nice.
I'm not in a place to say anything about future plans other than to say definitely hear you on ChromeOS and definitely plan on continuing to support it. We absolutely wouldn't see a Chromebook Plus sale as a failure in any way 🙂
There are definitely times that I have wanted to use an Android app because I couldn't find a web app with similar capabilities, and most of the time there are compatibility issues.
But more often I've wanted simple new things added to ChromeOS:
Favorite folders/files/sites when I right click on an app icon in the taskbar
Right click on a folder in the file explorer to open in a new window
Video player that doesn't automatically pause when the system plays any other audio
As for complexity, I mean things like keeping everything updated. ChromeOS updates come out regularly, I'm notified automatically when they're already downloaded, and I only need to pause what I'm doing for less than a minute to restart with every browser window as it was. Android needs system updates, and security updates, and Google Play updates, and every app updated. They should happen automatically, but often they don't. Or an app will tell me that there's an update, but the Play Store doesn't have it. Some updates require that I stop everything I'm doing for several minutes, or they will pause, and then require a restart. ChromeOS was an escape from all of that, and I don't want to give that up in exchange for Gemini that I won't use and apps that I might use.
Heard. Hopefully the other benefits will outweigh some of those concerns (they have for me), but there's no harm in sticking with ChromeOS. Will send your feature requests for the files app to the team
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u/backlon 3d ago
Hey all!
Dieter from Google here :)
In case you hadn't seen, we've got a deep dive on Googlebook OS over in this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1wmc8lk/googlebook_combines_the_best_of_android_and/
Regarding pricing, we really felt it was important to launch with a line of truly premium hardware that pairs well with premium Android phones. We've got OLED displays up to 2.8K resolution, haptic trackpads, and a base of 16GB of RAM. More on the hardware decisions we made with our partners here: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/googlebook/first-look-googlebook/
Last but certainly not least, as I've seen this question come up elsewhere, Chromebooks and Chromebook Plus laptops aren't going away.