Google’s subsequent Pixelbook Chromebook is canceled

Google has canceled the following model of its Pixelbook laptop computer and dissolved the crew accountable for constructing it. The system was far alongside in improvement and anticipated to debut subsequent yr, in accordance with an individual aware of the matter, however the mission was minimize as a part of latest cost-cutting measures inside Google. Members of the crew have been transferred elsewhere inside the corporate.

As lately as just a few months in the past, Google was planning to maintain the Pixelbook going. Forward of its annual I/O developer convention, Google {hardware} chief Rick Osterloh advised The Verge that “we’re going to do Pixelbooks sooner or later.” However he additionally acknowledged that the Chromebook market has modified since 2017 when the unique (and finest) Pixelbook launched. “What’s good in regards to the class is that it has matured,” Osterloh stated. “You possibly can count on them to final a very long time.” A method Google may be occupied with the ChromeOS market is that it merely doesn’t want Google the best way it as soon as did.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has been saying for months that he intends to decelerate hiring and minimize some tasks throughout the corporate. “In some instances, meaning consolidating the place investments overlap and streamlining processes,” he wrote in a July memo. “In different instances, meaning pausing improvement and re-deploying sources to increased precedence areas.” The Pixelbook crew and the Pixelbook itself had been casualties of that consolidation and redeployment.

“Google doesn’t share future product plans or personnel info; nevertheless, we’re dedicated to constructing and supporting a portfolio of Google merchandise which might be progressive and useful for our customers,” Laura Breen, a communications supervisor at Google, advised The Verge. “With reference to our individuals, in instances the place we do shift priorities we work to transition crew members throughout units and providers.”

Google’s {hardware} technique, significantly with the Pixel units, has been each to make good merchandise and to try to present different producers do the identical. It started investing in Pixel telephones as a option to showcase what Google’s tackle Android may appear to be. Extra lately, the corporate is reengaged in making smartwatches, with the Pixel Watch to come back in just a few weeks, and in constructing an Android pill because of ship subsequent yr. Each of these latter units exist in classes the place most Android units have failed. Google is making an attempt to persuade builders, producers, and clients that they are often good.

In an analogous approach, Google spent practically a decade making an attempt to show to the world {that a} high-end Chromebook was a good suggestion. With the primary Chromebook Pixel in 2013, it went intentionally excessive, placing ChromeOS — an working system Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt had stated could be featured on “fully disposable” {hardware} — onto a stunning system with a $1,300 price ticket. Google by no means meant for the Chromebook {hardware} to matter, however the {hardware} does matter, and so Google made the very best {hardware}. Nonetheless, the Pixel and the later Pixelbook fashions had been area of interest units with excessive costs, and whereas Google doesn’t get away its Chromebook gross sales, it was clearly too costly to make actual noise within the broader laptop computer market.

In 2017, when Google launched the Pixelbook, the case for ChromeOS had modified considerably. Now not was it only a lovely, helpful laptop computer — it was additionally a convertible, flipping system that could possibly be used like a pill. Google even constructed a stylus, referred to as the Pixelbook Pen, to accompany the system. The Pixelbook was Google’s try and fight the iPad and the MacBook Air in a single product. It had Google Assistant in-built, it may hook up with a Pixel telephone and use its information, and it may run Android apps. It was all of Google’s computing imaginative and prescient in a single physique. (It additionally had one of many all-time nice laptop computer keyboards.)

Since that system, Google has principally didn’t recapture what made the Pixelbook nice. It continued to chase and Chrome OS-ize all the pieces that appeared like the way forward for computing: first, there was the disastrous Pixel Slate, a pill with an attachable keyboard that appeared an terrible lot just like the Microsoft Floor. Then there was the Pixelbook Go, a smaller and barely cheaper model of the Pixelbook that, by the point it launched in 2019, simply couldn’t sustain with the competitors. “Comparable Chromebooks price not less than 100 bucks much less for comparable options,” The Verge’s Dieter Bohn wrote in his evaluation of the system. “So with the Pixelbook Go, what are you paying for?”

By 2019, an odd factor had occurred: Chromebooks had been good! Acer, Asus, and others had begun to really put money into non-disposable {hardware} for his or her ChromeOS units. Lenovo had a Yoga Chromebook, and Dell and HP had been beginning to promote Chromebooks throughout a variety of costs and specs. Chromebooks had gone from “the crappy however low cost choice” to a real various to Home windows. And most of these choices had been additionally considerably cheaper than any of Google’s Pixelbooks.

The units have been significantly profitable in schooling, however as Brian Lynch, an analyst at analysis agency Canalys, stated final yr, “Chromebooks are effectively and actually a mainstream computing product now.” There are good Chromebooks out there in all kinds: you should buy Chromebooks that flip, Chromebooks that fold, Chromebooks that detach, Chromebooks with ThinkPad-style trackpoints. Even the high-end market has turn out to be aggressive, with units just like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 bringing a few of Google’s design prowess to the house.

Within the early days of the pandemic, as college students wanted to attend college from residence, Chromebooks boomed. ChromeOS units outsold Apple’s Macs for the primary time, in accordance with information from evaluation agency IDC. And Canalys stated that Chromebooks grew 275 p.c between the primary quarter of 2020 and the identical interval in 2021. However because the PC market has slowed down after an enormous early pandemic enhance, ChromeOS has fallen greater than most: analysis agency Gartner predicted Chromebooks will likely be down a full 30 p.c in 2022.

Photograph by Becca Farsace / The Verge

In the meantime, Google hasn’t shipped a brand new laptop computer of its personal in nearly three years, although the Pixelbook Go remains to be on the market within the firm’s retailer. In latest months, some have speculated that Google’s Tensor chip may be a motive for the corporate to reinvest within the house, in search of methods to deliver its AI prowess to ChromeOS and laptops — and to unravel the Android compatibility drawback as soon as and for all.

Going ahead, it’s clear the corporate is focusing the place it believes the Android ecosystem wants it: smartwatches and tablets. It’s additionally doable that after years of making an attempt to make luxurious, cutting-edge Chromebooks occur, the corporate has realized that colleges and college students are prone to hold being the very best ChromeOS clients and that these clients won’t ever pay Google’s costs.

To be honest, although, Google has a protracted historical past of giving up on tasks earlier than ultimately deciding to strive them once more — smartwatches and even Google Glass all come to thoughts, and keep in mind three years in the past when Google stated it was getting out of the pill enterprise to focus solely on laptops? — so Google could sometime resolve it wants to assist juice the Chromebook market once more. However for now, the ChromeOS market is powerful, and Google’s now not making an attempt to maneuver it ahead.