Google unveils the successor to the Chromebook. Googlebook will be a new alternative to Windows laptops that promises to be significantly more powerful thanks to Android integration. However, Google has chosen to announce the laptops primarily as Gemini boxes.
Chromebooks are getting a successor: Google introduces the Googlebook. After sixteen years of Chromebooks, Google has distilled what is truly needed to allow a competitor for Windows laptops to thrive. The company then promptly pushed that knowledge into the background in favor of an advertising campaign for its own AI solution, Gemini.
Aluminium and Android
At its core, the Googlebook seems like a good idea. Googlebook will be the name for a laptop centered around Aluminium. This is essentially a version of Android developed by Google. The Aluminium flavor of Android theoretically combines the best of ChromeOS with the best of Android. The desktop will look familiar to ChromeOS users, with application icons at the bottom, and notifications and a clock at the top.
The Googlebook not only comes with close integration with Chrome and Google’s own Workspace suite, but can also run Android applications. To this end, Google provides integration with the Play Store. Third-party app stores will also be certified. It is unclear exactly how open Google wants to make the Googlebook, and whether it will be possible, for example, to sideload your own APKs. That seems doubtful at this point.
Need for optimization
Deeper integration with applications allows developers to optimize real software for Googlebooks. Chromebooks can handle apps to some extent, but the marriage between ChromeOS and applications was very forced. A Chromebook remains primarily a Chrome browser in a laptop body. That is not always desirable, and with Googlebooks, you will be able to run local applications such as office software.
How pleasant that experience will be depends on the momentum Google can gain with developers. Without the necessary optimizations, Android applications on a laptop are little more than phone apps on a large screen. Optimizing Android apps for large screens remains a difficult point, which Android tablets also struggle with.
Phone link
Googlebooks don’t just run Android; they also get deep integration with your Android-based phone. You will be able to stream apps from your smartphone to the Googlebook and transfer files quickly. This is already possible on Windows with various Android smartphones via Phone Link, but it will likely be more streamlined on Google’s devices. For instance, the taskbar will feature a button that allows you to see and open all the apps on your phone.
All of the above sounds interesting. A Googlebook thus appears to be a modern evolution of the Chromebook, taking full advantage of the Android ecosystem. If developers embrace the form factor, it could benefit the entire app landscape and even make Android tablets more interesting in the long run.
Advantages over ChromeOS and Windows
For users, the Googlebook is easier to understand than the Chromebook: the cloud connection is less essential, and access to apps implies it is more convenient to do what you want.
Android is much lighter than Windows, so Googlebooks can, in principle, be equipped with lightweight hardware. As with Chromebooks, this can keep the price down compared to Windows laptops. Now that PC components are becoming scarcer and more expensive, that is certainly an asset.
Despite the name, Google will not build Googlebooks itself. Instead, the company is looking to partners including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. The first devices are expected to be on shelves this fall.
Gemini, Gemini, Gemini
Unfortunately, Google mentions all of the above more as a side note. The Googlebook is not being marketed as a modernization of the Chromebook with Android capabilities, but as a laptop-shaped billboard for Gemini AI.
The Googlebook is being marketed as a laptop-shaped billboard for Gemini AI.
Google wants to use Googlebook to shove Gemini down users’ throats as much as possible. Anyone who thought Microsoft was already overstepping with the unsolicited integration of Copilot into Windows and Office should probably put their coffee down before reading further.
AI in the mouse cursor
Google is plastering Gemini onto every capability of the Googlebook, right down to the mouse cursor. Google itself says that Gemini’s helpfulness is at the core of the Googlebook, and users will accept that help whether they want it or not. You only need to shake your cursor (Google calls it a Magic Pointer) and Gemini appears. The AI watches your entire screen and uses contextual data from various applications.
The aggressiveness of the integration is at odds with its announced utility. It is not entirely clear what the added value of Gemini actually is. In combination with Nano Banana, you will be able to create images instantly based on what is on your screen, and you will receive context suggestions after wiggling your mouse.
If you point the cursor at a date in an email, Gemini will immediately want to schedule a meeting. Despite Google’s big words, it doesn’t seem like Gemini can do much more on your laptop than it can on your smartphone.
Cloud and subscription
The connection to Gemini happens via the cloud. The cloud independence that Google gains with the integration of Android on the laptops is immediately discarded by the thick layer of Gemini covering everything. The pricing strategy is unclear, but it seems unlikely that Googlebooks will include the full capabilities of cloud-based Gemini for free for long. It seems very likely that Google has a subscription in mind.
It is unclear who Google is trying to charm by presenting Gemini as so essential to the Googlebook. Although Google speaks of integration at the core, Gemini feels more like a tireless Clippy sitting between the user and Aluminium OS, doing everything it can to be relevant. You seemingly get nothing back but gimmicks that are, at best, slightly handy. In exchange, you share everything visible on your laptop with Gemini every time you shake your mouse too enthusiastically.
For whom?
Chromebooks have a large market share in the education sector because they combine the primary capabilities a laptop should have with an attractive price tag. It seems unlikely that the Googlebook can play a role in that segment as long as Gemini’s presence is so forced.
The Googlebook also has little to offer the business segment. Gemini’s ability to read an entire screen and use app data as context is at odds with even the most lax privacy and security rules in a corporate context. While Google does market ChromeOS and Chromebooks in an Enterprise formula, that does not seem to be the case for Googlebooks in their current form.
Individual users will likely not be impressed either. ITdaily readers indicated in a previous survey that performance and screen quality are relevant to their laptop choice. AI compatibility is literally at the very bottom of the priority list.
Google does not plan to replace ChromeOS and Chromebooks with Googlebook at this stage. ChromeOS will continue to exist, will still be developed, and will continue to receive support.
We will have to wait and see what the role of the Googlebook will be. Google has already experimented with several laptop-like devices without much success. Think, for example, of the Chromebook Pixel and the Pixelbook.
Yet Google seems to be putting a lot of eggs in the Googlebook basket. The question is what problem a Googlebook with Gemini solves: is Google meeting a demand from a segment of users here? Or an internal demand to make all those investments in AI and Gemini pay off?