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Google Hardware

Google is Just Letting the Pixelbook Rot (inputmag.com) 42

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google has a tendency to show up, innovate, and then abandon its products/services rather quickly. There's an entire site, Killed by Google, that's dedicated to documenting all of Google's dead projects. Even Stadia, Google's once-promising cloud gaming service, could be heading to the graveyard, after years of failing to measure up to Microsoft's xCloud and Nvidia's GeForce Now. But software is one thing. Hardware is another, and Google has let its premiere Chromebook, the Pixelbook, rot without a hardware refresh since 2019's Pixelbook Go.

Not counting the original Cr-48 reference design Chromebook, Google has released a total of four Chrome OS-powered laptops. There was the original 2013 Chromebook Pixel and 2015 Pixel 2 (not to be confused with the phones that are named Pixel). Then the 2-in-1 Pixelbook in 2017, and in 2019, the Pixelbook Go. The pattern for a refresh seemed to be every two years. This year's Pixel 6 event came and went with no word of a new Pixelbook. And according to a recent comment made at Qualcomm's conference by Chrys Tsolaki, Google's retail partner manager for Chromebooks, there won't be a Pixelbook in 2022, either.
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Google is Just Letting the Pixelbook Rot More

Google is Just Letting the Pixelbook Rot

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  • is that you always have something to write about.

  • I mean (Score:3)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @10:03AM (#62121867)
    They are either the same price as a laptop so why not get a lappy with a better OS
    Or the same price as a tablet, so why not get a better OS.

    • Yeah, strange OS and Google's abhorrent history of supporting other hardware probably turned off most potential buyers. The big draw I think came from the uncommon screen resolution and aspect ratio(3:2). It's unfortunate that this and microsoft's attempt at these more work-focused screens have been plagued by poor choices elsewhere.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Clearly the market is dragging it's heels, what we all want is a laptop that we can work and play movies on... at the same time so, 7.17:1 aspect ratio is a no brainer, common sense, it's the future.

    • We could argue the merits of Chromebooks but the fact is their sales absolutely exploded with remote schooling for Covid: "Last quarter, Chromebooks saw 275% year-over-year growth up to 12 million units. The figure isn't quite as unwieldy for Q2 [2021], but a 75% year-over-year growth is still extremely respectable, with the category hitting 11.9 million shipments, per the latest figures from research firm, Canalys."

      https://techcrunch.com/2021/07... [techcrunch.com]

      This was largely a one-time event, but now that teacher

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        Note that Chromebooks success are mostly a factor of being dirt cheap and for school districts, them being supremely disposable, and none of the drawbacks matter for a district providing a device that only needs to access web sites and services to get school work done.

        The issue with the Pixelbook concept is that it is a pretty expensive device for the ChromeOS limitations. If going ChromeOS, you might as well go dirt cheap, as the higher end device is pretty constrained (Intended as mostly just a platform

      • Yea, schools bought them. They want things they can use a bit with specs that are better than cheap Amazon Fire tablets that also aren't loaded with all the bullshit that Amazon loads them up with. They don't care about most of the features the rest of the market wants. This is not a case of a product that people will buy for themselves after they turn the device back in to school. They're not going to get some kind of enduring personal attachment here any more than Apple did loading up schools with Mac

    • Pixelbooks were $1000 when they were released. Can't imagine who ever thought they would sell.

    • They are either the same price as a laptop so why not get a lappy with a better OS Or the same price as a tablet, so why not get a better OS.

      Mostly agreed.

      The main niche market for Chromebooks is where you want something appliance-like that's simple, hard to screw up the OS and does just enough. There's not a lot of room for iteration and improvement in a laptop that deliberately isn't complicated.

      I bought one this summer because I had a use-case for one and I recall its feature list was basically: has screen (yes), has keyboard (yes), has Wifi (yes), has a software support promise (yes), has other things (no). Comparing to other Chromeboo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      Chromebooks are not the same price as laptops or full featured tablets. A decent laptop with decent performance and battery life is going to run you at least $700. A decent tablet with decent performance, battery life, and a good keyboard is going to cost about as much. A decent Chromebook on the other hand is going to be closer to $400-$500. If you decide to compare the Chromebook to an Amazon Fire instead, then the argument changes to showcase how the Chromebook is the better device.

      You may have a level o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        The Pixelbook was priced consistent with moderately high end laptops. Decent Android tablets run under $400.

        ChromeOS *can* support Android apps, but there are plenty of ways for the android runtime to become unusable in ChromeOS so you have better experience with an Android Tablet.

        However, the 'tablet with a keyboard and multi-window paradigm' concept Google seems to have oddly carved out as ChromeOS rather than Android. I think Android would do better than ChromeOS with better window management added.

    • They are either the same price as a laptop so why not get a lappy with a better OS

      Why? So I can browse the web and do gmail, youtube, etc. in a much more complicated and liable-to-get-messed-up way?

      • 1. Use a modern OS. A lot harder to mess those up. Unless you are an idiot.
        2. If all you are going to being doing is consuming internet media, best to get a phone.

        • Re:I mean (Score:4, Informative)

          by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @12:39PM (#62122429) Journal

          1. Use a modern OS. A lot harder to mess those up. Unless you are an idiot.

          I see you haven't actually used Chromebooks. If all you want to do is use the web (including web-based apps), Chromebooks provide the best experience of any device, hands down. There's just so little to go wrong. And if, somehow, something does go wrong, you just powerwash (factory reset) the thing and log in again, all your stuff quickly gets synced back down, while you're using it.

          2. If all you are going to being doing is consuming internet media, best to get a phone.

          Who said anything about media? There is a lot more on the Internet than media.

        • 2. If all you are going to being doing is consuming internet media, best to get a phone.

          I'm guessing you never heard of gmail, google docs...etc.

          Phones don't have big screens or keyboards, either.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        Why would you buy a thousand dollar ChromeBook to do gmail, youtube, etc? That's the pertinent question here, Google brought 'high end Chromebooks' to exist and there isn't really a market for that (a platform deliberately crippled for limited local function, plus a device that's expensive to... facilitate better local function)

        • Who said anything about $1000? We were discussing ChromeOS vs. "better OS" (whatever that is).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stikves ( 127823 )

      It has good Linux support for the last couple of years. Even some Steam games will run, but of course those will have some issues.

      There is a container based Ubuntu?, I guess. And has rudimentary GUI and OpenGL support. Audio works too. The only limitation is direct access to hardware. KVM is not possible for nested VMs (tried experimenting with Qemu inside), and USB is forwarded on case-by-case basis.

    • Cheaper to run because they only run a browser.
      I can attest to this since I have my mother use one and I almost never need to give her any help.
      Her Microsoft Windows computer, hasn't been turned on in years because it stopped working and I've not been able to get there to fix it.

    • They are either the same price as a laptop so why not get a lappy with a better OS
      Or the same price as a tablet, so why not get a better OS.

      Bingo.

      I never understood the allure of Chromebooks, they're genuinely crippled by default. Just spend a tiny bit more and get a real laptop.

  • But software is one thing. Hardware is another

    What hardware has Google really improved support for over the years?

    It sure seems to me like most examples show Google limping along with half-hearted hardware support at best.

    Nest has kind of stagnated, Pixel phones just kind of keep up. Google WiFi blimps are not filling the skies anywhere.

    Internal hardware maybe, they have innovated the hell out of street view capture including interiors. But anything consumer facing? That's a 60% project at best bro.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I agree. I have a 2017 Pixelbook (16GB RAM model) and I love it. Super light weight, fast suspend and resume, great battery life. I turned on developer mode immediately and installed Crouton (pre-Crostini) so that it's basically a lightweight linux laptop with all the pros of a chromebook. GUI apps with Crouton are a bit... ugly/hacky, but CLI is fantastic. Crostini though definitely has a performance hit, since it's running as a container within a VM. Everything is noticeably slower for some reason compare

  • 2019 was yesterday (Score:5, Insightful)

    by loufoque ( 1400831 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @11:05AM (#62122065)

    Stop asking for new stuff every six months.

    My main desktop computer is from 2011 and is still perfectly functional. There hasn't really been any significant innovation in computer hardware since then.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      I wish I had mod points. My last desktop build was in 2010, I got a laptop in 2012 and then it started to finally wear out in 2017 (after countless air/sea/land miles) so I got a new laptop then. My 2017 laptop still plays AAA games on medium ok.

      If the battery were user replaceable in my old phone, i'd still have it. Technology has stagnated pretty hard since 2014 and I just have zero desire to upgrade. I might buy a new desktop in 2023 though.

      If you're buying bottom/mid tier stuff it might

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Even the 2013 Pixel chromebook is still perfectly OK, if it had software updates.

      Which makes Chromebooks rather ridiculous since they have very long useful lives, they're only artificially shortened due to software. I'm sure if it could run the latest Chrome just fine.

  • They missed the 2 year mark. It's dead Jim. Netcraft confirmed it.

  • Every part of Google is rot, nothing new here. Go ahead swallow the poison pill.

  • Why is this trifle "news"? Techies don't buy that shit and non-techies don't care/

  • What stopped me using my pixel was that chrome was tied to the OS, and when they stopped the os updates, chrome stopped updating.... Now my age old computer running some age old Ubuntu can run the latest chrome browser, but not my much newer and more expensive and powerful Chromebook.

  • Never ever rely on a google service or product. Yes, some are less likely to be abandoned but there is literally nothing stopping them from killing off, say, GMail tomorrow.

    They could discontinue Google Drive next week and you'd have no recourse, period.

    If you have a paid GMail account (i.e. corporate) then they may have to give you a few months notice or whatever, but the fact is that they can do pretty much whatever they want whenever they want.

  • I had high hopes when this came out. I am an original Chromie; they sent me a CR-48 and I thought, 'this concept has merit.' Sure enough, CBs are quite popular. Yet my Pixelbook Go was terrible. It wouldn't stream any media, honest. I got a high-up Google engineer involved, even he couldn't make sense of it. I sent it back, got a brand new one from Google, and then sold that sucker still in the shrink wrap. Ended up with a 13" MBP, and other than issues with Apple's horrible back-end support, it's worked f
  • Google harvest data to sell ads. ANYTHING else they do is just a means to the same single end

  • Google introduced the Pixelbook at a time when their hardware partners were only building low end Chromebooks. They needed a flagship product to show off the potential of the Chromebook, and for executives to use at companies that went all-in on Chromebooks (it wouldn't do for them to carry a $300 plastic laptop into a meeting). Since then other companies started to produce premium Chromebooks, so there is no longer any need for Google to fill that niche with its own hardware.

    The story is different for the

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