Valentina Palladino
Google’s hardware department is still unable to make a consistent, reliable hardware selection. A report from The Verge claims that Google “cancelled the next version of its Pixelbook laptop and disbanded the team responsible for building it.” This has been the case for several years now, but the only new Chromebooks out there are third-party ones.
The last laptop released by the company was the Chromebook Go in 2019, which is still available for purchase at store.google.com. Shortly after the launch of that device, reports emerged that the laptop and tablet division was being downsized. While the tablet plans were able to recover thanks to Android, the laptop plans are apparently dead. The last credible rumors about Google laptops were from the lead up to the launch of Google Tensor/Pixel 6. It was rumored that Google would make its own chips and, along with rumors of a phone (Pixel 6) consistently claimed a laptop version. would come off the chip. Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of Google Hardware, said in May that the company “would start making Pixelbooks in the future,” and the report says that “the device was already well into development and expected to debut next year” before it launches. got cancelled.
The reason for the dissolution of the Pixelbook team is apparently the cost savings of Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Google’s CEO said in August that “productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the workforce we have” and warned that the company would “consolidate where investments overlap and streamline processes.” The Verge report says, “The Pixelbook team and the Pixelbook itself were victims of that consolidation and reshuffle.”
Taking Google Hardware seriously as a real business has always been difficult. Google treats the hardware market as a small hobby and only sells devices in a small number of countries. Google Hardware’s product lines are hardly product “lines,” with inconsistent releases and none of the iterative annual improvements that seem to drive other hardware operations. Without an automatic annual Pixelbook release, Google’s timing with this relaunch would have been terrible. It last released a Chromebook a year before the pandemic, and when the pandemic hit and Chromebook sales hit an all-time high, Google had nothing to offer. Google’s Pixelbook would have arrived just before Chromebook sales crashed back to Earth.
The instability of Google Hardware means that no dead product is ever truly dead. Google stopped making tablets in 2015, came back for Chrome OS tablets in 2018, then stopped for another three years, and now it plans to launch a new Android tablet in 2023. Sure, we’ll get another Google laptop someday, but we’ll have to wait a few more years.
