Googlebooks are incredible phone companions, but they left too much of ChromeOS behind

After spending the past couple of weeks testing all five launch Googlebooks as my daily drivers, there is a whole lot about this new platform that I genuinely love. The hardware across the board is phenomenal, featuing fast processors, gorgeous displays, punchy speakers, great keyboards, awesome trackpads, and instant biometric unlocks. On the software side, the animations are buttery smooth, desktop widgets and folders feel right at home, and native Android apps run better than they ever have on a laptop.

Even better, the cross-device integration with my phone is nothing short of magic. Moving files seamlessly, casting an app from my phone to order lunch or check a quick notification, firing up a rock-solid instant hotspot while traveling, and using “Continue On” to pick up tasks right where I left off have all been standout upgrades to my daily routine.

But so far, it is far from perfect. For long-time Chromebook users like me, there was a natural expectation that a decade of hard-earned ChromeOS lessons would come along for the ride with Googlebook. Instead, it feels like all of Android showed up to the party, while much of the foundational desktop maturity of ChromeOS was discarded along the way.

Missing the desktop basics on a $1,000 machine

Do Googlebooks work infinitely better with your phone than Chromebooks ever did? Absolutely. But when you strip away the mobile ecosystem perks and judge Googlebook OS purely as a desktop platform, it is missing basic productivity features that ChromeOS, macOS, and Windows have nailed for years.

Right now, spending $1,000 on a Googlebook feels like a leap of faith that Google will improve things rapidly, and early adopters are bumping into frustrating limitations across the OS:

• Half-Baked Virtual Desks: The virtual desk setup on Googlebook OS is so barebones that it barely counts. You cannot rename workspaces, you cannot drag and drop desks or move windows between them, and there are zero trackpad gestures to swipe between spaces. It is so rigid that I have largely given up and forced my workflow onto a single desk.
• A Downgraded Chrome Browser: So much of my daily desktop productivity lives inside Chrome, and the current Googlebook version is an undeniable step backward from what we have on ChromeOS, Windows, and Mac. While Google promises rapid improvements via Chrome’s two-week update cycle, launching a flagship desktop OS without a true desktop version of Chrome really hurts the current experience.
• No Sidebar Hierarchy in Files: The native Files app lacks an expandable folder tree in the sidebar, turning simple tasks like organizing and moving files across directories into a difficult chore.
• Forced Web vs. Android App Choices: Googlebook OS excels at running both web apps and Android apps, yet the system won’t let you freely install both versions of a service – like Gmail or YouTube Music – and choose the one that fits your workflow best. Forcing that distinction on users makes zero sense.

Tablet compromises on laptop hardware

If you take a quick scroll through the r/Googlebook subreddit or early adopter forums across the web, you will see dozens of similar small, annoying oversights piling up.

If these machines were priced and positioned as secondary Android tablets meant to complement your phone and your primary computer, these quirks wouldn’t be a big deal. The problem is that Google and its hardware partners are asking buyers to drop $1,000 or more on premium laptops that currently carry tablet-like software limitations.

A $1,000 laptop needs to handle core desktop productivity out of the box, not six months from now.

The clock is ticking for Google to deliver

The silver lining here is that none of these problems require a total architectural overhaul to fix. Virtual desks could be cleaned up in a single system update. A collapsible folder tree could easily be patched into the Files app. A simple underlying policy tweak could let Android and web apps co-exist peacefully.

I remember the rough, early days of Chromebooks well, and because I genuinely believe in the vision and massive upside of Googlebook OS, I am willing to stick with it while the team irons out the kinks. However, everyday buyers won’t be nearly as patient.

We can talk about the arrival of heavyweight “desktop-class apps” another day as that is essentially a different (equally important) discussion and I do believe they will come in time. But if Google doesn’t fix the core operating system fundamentals quickly and publicly, they are going to face a serious adoption problem long before those big-name apps ever matter.

No one is rooting for this OS and these laptops more than me, but after giving this overall experience plenty of time to marinate at this point, I have to admit I’m pretty frustrated by the current state of Googlebook.

The hardware holds up to the price tag, but the OS needs work. And it needs it quickly. While Chromebooks quickly developed a bad reputation for crummy, cheap hardware, Googlebook stands to fall to the same fate on the software side of things if Google doesn’t patch things up fast and very publicly. I sincerely hope that is the story of Googlebook when we look back a year from now, and for better or worse, as it unfolds, we’ll be here to keep you in the loop.