Googlebook should have been framed as the Chromebook successor, not a MacBook rival

If you’ve spent any time reading or watching the initial wave of Googlebook reviews over the past couple of weeks, you’ve seen the frustration firsthand. Mainstream reviewers are picking up these $1,000+ laptops, measuring them directly against M-series MacBooks and Windows laptops, and walking away baffled. And honestly? If you approach a Googlebook expecting a drop-in replacement for macOS or Windows today, that harsh press is completely earned.

The root of the problem isn’t so much that these machines struggle in a traditional laptop fight – it’s how they were framed. Google let high-end hardware pricing and unclear communication at launch to set the stage without clearly defining what a Googlebook actually is. Pitching it even loosely as the “laptop for Android phone users” or leaving the door open for direct comparisons to Windows or macOS invited the wrong kind of scrutiny from day one.

As a developing thread over on X from @DigestAndroid highlights, the entire conversation is off-kilter because of that muddled framing. In my mind, Googlebook and Googlebook OS are the spiritual and literal heir apparent to Chromebooks and ChromeOS. If Google had simply positioned them from the start as the next evolution of the Chromebook – built with a massive long-term architectural ceiling – the early reviews would have landed much softer.

But that realization exposes a harder truth: even as the clear successor to ChromeOS, Googlebook doesn’t currently supersede a high-end Chromebook when it comes to getting actual work done today. Will that change? I fully expect so, but in month one, this fact alone makes Googlebook a tough sell unless you are ready to deal with the hiccups along the way as fixes and added features come in.

A Chromebook with a much higher ceiling

For over a decade, ChromeOS proved that a fast, secure browser-first machine could handle 90% of daily computing. The problem was never the workflow; it was the ceiling. Bolting Android containers and Linux virtual machines onto an OS based around the web (and a web browser) was never going to carry Google into the next decade of local AI and more advanced computing.

By rebuilding on Android 17, Google gave itself the foundational headroom to build something genuinely special over the future. Today, you get phone integration that is miles smoother than Phone Hub ever was, desktop folders, useful widgets, gorgeous UI animations, and deep, actually-useful system-level Gemini features like Rambler and Magic Pointer. Down the road – hopefully – we’ll get all the current productivity perks we already have on ChromeOS along with tons of new, amazing features.

When seen this way, the heavy reliance of Googlebook on web apps makes way more sense. When not being held up to older computing systems like macOS and Windows, I for one appreciate the clean, usable, lightweight nature of web apps over installed applications for everything I do on a daily basis. I don’t see this as a limitation at all, actually, and will lean on web-based software as often as possible regardless of the OS I’m using.

This was fully understood for ChromeOS and is a learned behavior for legacy OS users. I get that, and by framing Googlebook as something far more akin to a Chromebook, I think early reviewers would have chilled out a bit on the current lack of desktop-class Android apps. But as it stands right now, without making that point explicit, Google left the door open for some pretty scathing criticism.

When it comes to getting work done, ChromeOS is still way ahead

While that high, future ceiling is exciting to think about, we’re still here in the present for now, and here is the truth: if Googlebook is the true successor to ChromeOS, it cannot afford to be worse than a $400-$800 Chromebook at basic desktop productivity. And once you strip away the phone sync, Gemini tricks, and desktop widgets, Googlebook OS falls far behind ChromeOS for actually getting work done.

As I wrote last week, Googlebooks left too much of ChromeOS behind, and spending ten minutes scrolling through the r/Googlebook subreddit shows that longtime Chromebook users are hitting the exact same walls I am.

In threads like this one and this one, early adopters are pointing out that their budget Chromebook Plus devices handle daily workflows effortlessly that currently trip up a $1,200 Googlebook. Here’s a quick look at the real-world productivity gaps users are dealing with right now:

• No Multiple Chrome Profiles: As detailed in a popular r/Googlebook breakdown, Chrome on Googlebook OS still doesn’t support multiple browser profiles. To be fair, neither does Chrome on Chromebook, but if you set up separate OS-level users for work and personal accounts, you can easily hot-swap between them with a quick keyboard shortcut. Not on Googlebook OS. And this is one of the long-time pain points we all expected Googlebook OS to have right away.
• Chrome Playing Catch-Up: Because Chrome on Googlebook is built on a newer Android desktop branch rather than the decades-old ChromeOS browser stack, Google is having to patch in basic desktop behaviors every two weeks. As we covered in our recent Chrome 156 update for Googlebook, features as basic as a “Save As” download prompt and proper Alt + Tab window switching in fullscreen apps are only just arriving now, while tab group syncing is still missing – along with an absolute slew of other long-standing functionality.
• Broken Virtual Desks & Trackpad Gestures: On a Chromebook, four-finger swiping between virtual desks and three-finger swiping into an overview of your windows is muscle memory. As users in the Reddit First Impressions Megathread and bug tracker threads have vented, Googlebook’s virtual desks lack multi-finger trackpad gestures and don’t even let you drag an open app into a new desk with your cursor. You also can’t rearrange them or name those desks right now, either.
• Files App & App Install Restrictions: Beyond missing a simple collapsible folder tree in the left panel, the native Files app lacks SMB support for connecting to local NAS network drives – another long-time staple on ChromeOS. Add in the fact that Googlebook OS arbitrarily blocks you from having both the PWA and Android versions of an app installed (and even hides Play Store games that run great on a Chromebook Plus), and the friction adds up fast.

Google has to close the ChromeOS gap immediately

To their credit, the Googlebook engineering team is clearly listening and moving fast, with community liaisons actively gathering feedback on Reddit and shipping bi-weekly browser fixes. And as I admitted after going back to a Chromebook for a few days, the hardware and phone synergy on Googlebook are already sticky enough that you feel their absence when they’re gone.

But long-term potential doesn’t excuse short-term regressions on a $1,000 laptop. If Google had simply framed Googlebook from day one as the next-generation Chromebook, the initial reviews would have been a lot fairer. But for that narrative to truly stick, Googlebook OS has to at least match a Chromebook at getting real work done. Not next year, but right now.