this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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The biggest selling point for Chromebooks was that they are A) Cheap and B) Simple/Fast. Education and Enterprise used them because they were easy to manage.
The cheapest Googlebook is $899 and it's biggest selling features are a bunch of AI junk nobody asked for. They also cannot be managed yet in the Google Admin Console.
I expect this to flop something terrible.
Because Chromebooks are cheap, nobody spends money on them, so they're perenially underpowered.
If you grew up with a Chromebook, your first "real" laptop--if you ever get one--would probably not be a more expensive Chromebook, you'd want a "real" computer: Windows or Mac.
Makes sense to make a clear delineation for the market with different branding, hardware and OS.
If we could get an OS that is as comfortable on a phone as it is on a tablet as it on a laptop, that would be pretty cool. I'm working a phone, tablet and desktop right now, and each has a different OS.
That said, leading with AI is a horrible fucking idea, you're right. Sounds like something that sounded like a good idea a year ago, but the market has spoken out pretty clearly against AI-integration into Windows... but if it's workable, I'd still count an Android laptop with solid h/w as a win.
You've got that backwards. Chromebooks are supposed to be cheap, which means they're low power, which means they need a lightweight OS. That's what ChromeOS is for.
This isn't branching into a different market. It's a replacement for ChromeOS.. Which means the ChromeOS market segment is just being abandoned entirely.
ChromeOS was trying to bust out of that cheap & low power niche. I talked to an official Google Chrome salesman that was trying to talk me into getting a $500+ chromebook for gaming, which he was actually played on his lunch break... I think the secret sauce was running Android apps.
But, yes, Chromebook did fill up the cheap computing needs of students and children, and did that job admirably. I somehow didn't process that Chromebook was being discontinued because that seems kinda crazy to me. I thought they were quite successful, and that niche isn't going to be served with $1k+ laptops, but maybe the institutional buy-into the Google ecosystem will push schools into buying these things the same way businesses are pushed into Windows and Teams.
Or we'll just go back to books at this point; tech in education seems to be a universally recognized disaster.
I mean ChromeOS is just such an incapable OS in and of itself that anyone who needs to do any serious work wouldn't be able to use it anyway, and thus wouldn't spend a bunch of money on one. $500 is still very entry level, and a laptop at that? For gaming? Yeah good luck with that.
PCMagazine, in a desperate attempt to sucker people into giving them Amazon revenue, has an article you might find legitmately hilarious:
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-chromebooks-for-gaming
Chromebooks and Chromecast both seemed to be really successful and focused things. Very Google, and different from Apple and Microsoft’s style of doing things.
Yet here we are, with both of them phased out or being phased out. I don’t get it.
Google has this really deep-rooted problem where they keep accidentally, through no fault or intention of their own, making things people actually like. It's very upsetting and from all other indications they are doing everything they can to prevent it from ever happening again, and yet it keeps happening. Nobody can explain why. All they can do is immediately cancel the problematic products and services the moment they realize people actually like them.
All the wannabe “artists” and “musicians” will be begging their parents for one of these, I guarantee it.