Googlebook

googlebook.google

789 points by tambourine_man 17 hours ago


https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8xls/introducin...

ankurdhama - 39 minutes ago

So this is essentially Android desktop mode with Android 17 Gemini integration. Please get rid of that top panel. I just don't get why this and desktops like GNOME tries to copy macos top panel when clearly in macos it is menu bar that host app menus but that concept doesn't exists in these other desktops and yet they have a top panel. This is just bad UX.

This will follow same model as Chromebooks i.e different devices from different OEM partners and for x86 and arm. So soon someone will be able to create a generic ISO for this that you can boot on a standard x86 PC/laptop.

Samsung is also working on such devices but they will probably have Dex which is much better then the current Android desktop mode.

Kadecgos - 14 hours ago

So, I'm only slightly trying to be a smartass here, but... Who is this for? They are marketing what is ostensibly a computer for people who seem to not want to use a computer in scenarios that I don't think even exist.

Beyond that, this is a laptop that is running a really shitty, 'apps only, no you cannot do anything useful with this' operating system. I have an awful lot of complaints about MacOS's relatively restrictive use cases, but it's still at least a General Purpose OS. Android on laptop is very much not.

This is an overgrown phone with all the trash that comes with a phone, and the very finite use cases that come with a phone, only now it has a keyboard. It's solving none of the problems with Android as an operating system and doesn't seem to even be interested in doing that anyway. The marketing is demoing use cases that don't even exist.

So I repeat my question: Who is this for?

przemelek - 10 hours ago

Would prefer a 'Google Linux'—a native desktop OS with a unified UI philosophy, similar to a macOS experience but built on a standard Linux foundation. Instead of ChromeOS or Android as the base, treat them as subsystems for compatibility.

The real 'next big thing' would be integrating an engine like Gemini with OS-level hooks (similar to the OpenClaw approach) so agents can manipulate app windows and state directly. Resurrecting Web Intents as 2-way App Intents would be the key to making this work.

Also, keeping prompts as local .md files with an Obsidian-like system editor would be a huge win for power users. Simply gating Gemini behind 'premium' Chromebooks feels like the old 'licking the cake' strategy from the Google+ days—trying to force a new product's success by coopting existing hardware rather than building a superior platform.

I can imagine having Gemini + local Gemma working with Agents, which have access to my e-mail (ideally on GMAIL, but also supporting outlook), keeping local history of my visited sites and messages... and using RAG or something even better, ideally with looking also on repos I have checkouted to my file system, and maybe even whole file system....

Work related e-mail about "sending invoice to customer"... it may suggest proper content for e-mail. Having "dashboard" with summary of todays communication to you, your tickets (at work) and so on....

Can Google build such thing? If somebody can - it will be them. Will they build it? Probably not, they would prefer to build 3rd version of Google Pay.

mturk - 16 hours ago

I bought a Pixelbook during the middle of their product lifetime, and it was one of the best laptops I ever had. I genuinely don't know how broadly that sentiment was shared, but the cancellation of the product line suggests "not that broadly." Google has changed since that time and I am a bit skeptical this will meet that specific niche for me.

achow - 16 hours ago

Google seems to have made an official post on Reddit describing the feature set in detail:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8xls/introducin...

[Edit]

And, the feature set references the 'AI mouse pointer' from this Deepmind blog..

https://deepmind.google/blog/ai-pointer/

Jzush - 15 hours ago

Gross. This is just more proof that corporations simply don't know how to market AI. Everything is an ad for an ad at this point. The very first thing they show this new machine doing is helping people shop for clothes using AI.

No one is doing that, these people don't exist. No matter how hard corporate America wishes they did. This is why AI doesn't sell. This is why companies like Microsoft and Dell are pulling back on their AI claims and why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.

At this point I'm convinced that marketing has been completely taken over by shareholder shills, marketing to customers they wish they had instead of the real customers that exist.