It’s past time for Google to deliver on the promised Chromebook Plus AI

It’s a bit tough to believe, but it has been a solid four and a half months since the debut and launch of Chromebook Plus. It doesn’t’ feel like it was that long ago that we were in New York at Google’s awesome event for the big news, and as we now round into the final parts of February, spring and the start of Q2 2024 feel right within reach. Yet there’s no sign of one of the biggest highlights of the Chromebook Plus launch: the fun and useful AI features.

To be fair, they were promised for 2024, but as they were announced in the absolute earliest days of Q4 in 2023, it felt pretty certain that 2024 meant early 2024. With the next version of ChromeOS (M122) not due out until March 5th, this is the final update we’ll see in Q1. ChromeOS 123 won’t arrive until April. So that mean Google needs to get things in place to get their AI features launched in the next update or they’ll fly outside of the 6 month window of delivering on their promises.

The AI train has left the station

I wrote at the end of last year about the fact that Google had a real opportunity to be the front-runner in the built-in AI game, and I still stand by that. I knew it would take a bit of time to roll out these AI features, but they aren’t exactly game-changing at this point. The most complex of the bunch is the ability for ChromeOS to help you write better text in any application or open window, and that feature is sort of being rolled out to the Chrome browser already.

From Google’s own Gemini announcements to Microsoft Copilot to ChatGPT, AI is moving fast and invading all sorts of spaces. The advantage Google could have had for a few months with AI on Chromebook Plus is about to dry up and I hate seeing that. In many ways, Chromebooks are already thought of as lesser-than, and adding “me too” AI features after they are available elsewhere on other operating systems feels like a big miss when Chromebook Plus was showing this stuff off nearly 5 months ago.

Over-promise, under-deliver

Unfortunately, it feels like one of the cooler parts of the Chromebook Plus story might end up as a classic over-promise and under-deliver situation. I get it: this stuff is complex. I just wish Google would have understood that a bit more clearly in October when they showed us all this fun stuff our Chromebook Plus devices would be able to do. “Coming soon” only works when soon isn’t 6 months away.

At this point, a 5-month delivery is the best possible outcome, and I don’t have a lot of hope that all this stuff is going to magically arrive in ChromeOS 122. And that would then put us out to ChromeOS 123 in April, a full 6 months (or half a year) since these features were announced. In the tech world, that’s an eternity. In AI, it’s even longer. All of this stuff is moving at insane speeds, and I’d hate for the AI features to finally arrive on Chromebooks just to already feel behind the curve.

One possible reason for the delay

If I were to cut Google a bit of slack on this, I’d have to guess that some of the more-recent moves in the AI space around Gemini could be to blame. Bard’s out (thankfully, as I hated that name) and now Gemini is the face of Google’s AI efforts. I love the consolidation and look forward to Gemini fully taking over all the new AI tasks as well as the older Google Assistant stuff.

But I feel like these moves could have had a lot to do with why the Chromebook Plus AI isn’t yet here. When we look at all that has changed in Google’s world involving AI, it’s easy to see that this could have had a massive trickle-down effect on how the ChromeOS team was set to deliver the promised AI bits to users. I of course don’t know that this was 100% the case, but it only makes sense.

Either way, some formal communication on the matter would be helpful at this point. As I said before, you can’t say “Coming soon” and leave people hanging for 6 months with no word or updates. If it’s going to be a bit, they need to just own it and say so. As a whole, Chromebook Plus has been pretty solid as an effort to clearly show consumers which Chromebooks to buy. But empty promises can rob that momentum very quickly, and I’m really hopeful that doesn’t end up being the case.