Google canceled its subsequent Pixelbook and shut down the staff constructing it

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

As just lately as a number of months in the past, Google was planning to maintain the Pixelbook going. Ahead of its annual I/O developer convention, Google {hardware} chief Rick Osterloh advised The Verge that “we are going to do Pixelbooks in the future.” But he additionally acknowledged that the Chromebook market has modified since 2017 when the unique (and greatest) Pixelbook launched. “What’s nice about the category is that it has matured,” Osterloh mentioned. “You can expect them to last a long time.” One means Google is likely to be serious about the ChromeOS market is that it merely doesn’t want Google the way in which it as soon as did.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has been saying for months that he intends to decelerate hiring and minimize some initiatives throughout the corporate. “In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes,” he wrote in a July memo. “In other cases, that means pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas.” The Pixelbook staff and the Pixelbook itself have been casualties of that consolidation and redeployment.

“Google doesn’t share future product plans or personnel information; however, we are committed to building and supporting a portfolio of Google products that are innovative and helpful for our users,” Laura Breen, a communications supervisor at Google, advised The Verge. “In regards to our people, in times where we do shift priorities we work to transition team members across devices and services.”

Google’s {hardware} technique, significantly with the Pixel units, has been each to make good merchandise and to try to present different producers find out how to do the identical. It started investing in Pixel telephones as a option to exhibit what Google’s tackle Android might appear to be. More just lately, the corporate is reengaged in making smartwatches, with the Pixel Watch to return in a number of weeks, and in constructing an Android pill on account of ship subsequent yr. Both 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 identical means, 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 mentioned could be featured on “completely 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 most effective {hardware}. Still, the Pixel and the later Pixelbook fashions have 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. No longer 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, known 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 inbuilt, it might hook up with a Pixel telephone and use its knowledge, and it might 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 did not recapture what made the Pixelbook nice. It continued to chase and Chrome OS-ize the whole lot 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 Surface. 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 cost at least a hundred bucks less for similar features,” The Verge’s Dieter Bohn wrote in his assessment of the system. “So with the Pixelbook Go, what are you paying for?”

By 2019, a wierd factor had occurred: Chromebooks have been good! Acer, Asus, and others had begun to truly spend money on non-disposable {hardware} for his or her ChromeOS units. Lenovo had a Yoga Chromebook, and Dell and HP have been beginning to promote Chromebooks throughout a variety of costs and specs. Chromebooks had gone from “the crappy but cheap option” to a real various to Windows. And most of these choices have been additionally considerably cheaper than any of Google’s Pixelbooks.

The units have been significantly profitable in training, however as Brian Lynch, an analyst at analysis agency Canalys, mentioned final yr, “Chromebooks are well and truly a mainstream computing product now.” There are good Chromebooks obtainable in all types: you should buy Chromebooks that flip, Chromebooks that fold, Chromebooks that detach, Chromebooks with ThinkPad-style trackpoints. Even the high-end market has turn into 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 area.

In the early days of the pandemic, as college students wanted to attend faculty from dwelling, Chromebooks boomed. ChromeOS units outsold Apple’s Macs for the first time, in response to knowledge from evaluation agency IDC. And Canalys mentioned that Chromebooks grew 275 percent between the primary quarter of 2020 and the identical interval in 2021. But 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 probably be down a full 30 percent in 2022.

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Meanwhile, Google hasn’t shipped a brand new laptop computer of its personal in nearly three years, although the Pixelbook Go is still for sale within the firm’s retailer. In current months, some have speculated that Google’s Tensor chip is likely to be a cause for the corporate to reinvest within the area, in search of methods to convey its AI prowess to ChromeOS and laptops — and to resolve the Android compatibility downside 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 attainable that after years of making an attempt to make luxurious, cutting-edge Chromebooks occur, the corporate has realized that faculties and college students are more likely to maintain being the most effective ChromeOS clients and that these clients won’t ever pay Google’s costs.

To be truthful, although, Google has an extended historical past of giving up on initiatives 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 mentioned it was getting out of the pill enterprise to focus solely on laptops? — so Google might sometime resolve it wants to assist juice the Chromebook market once more. But for now, the ChromeOS market is powerful, and Google’s not making an attempt to maneuver it ahead.