Google's Android Laptop Googlebook Stumbles: Great Hardware, Software That Makes You Want a Refund
Hardware ranging from "great" to "excellent," software that had four professional editors venting in a group chat — that's the state of Google's new Googlebook laptops.
Three key facts
Google's new operating system is off to a rocky start: the five newly launched Googlebooks have excellent hardware, but the software is the weak point. According to The Verge, four of its staffers are testing Googlebooks simultaneously, and their internal Slack has been "mostly filled with collective venting of frustrations, disappointments, and bewilderment." The review says Googlebook OS feels like a step back even from ChromeOS at launch.
The complaints are dense and refreshingly concrete: Chrome still can't run with separate Google accounts; many Android apps feel as clunky on a Googlebook as they did on ChromeOS; you can't swipe between desktops or drag windows to another virtual desktop; and there's a "Clear All" button to the left of your desktops that kills every app at once — logic lifted straight from Android's phone app switcher, deeply counterintuitive on a laptop. The Signal app pairs with your phone easily, but sending a message requires Ctrl+Enter, highlighting text doesn't work, and click-and-drag scrolls instead.
The sharpest line comes from the reviewer himself: "If I bought one of these Googlebooks I'd be mad at myself for being a paying beta tester for Google." The piece also notes that even installing Slack's PWA version doesn't work properly, leaving the author to wonder "who should I be mad at? Slack or Google?"
Wang Dou's Take
Google's justification at launch was that replacing ChromeOS with Android would allow much faster development. Sounds reasonable. But the product logic doesn't hold — "faster development" saves Google effort, not yours. Users aren't paying for your iteration speed; they're paying for a working system. If day one doesn't even have "drag a window to another desktop," what exactly is this "faster" buying?
The clearest tell is that "Clear All" button. On a phone, an app switcher can offer one-tap clear-all because context switches are frequent and cheap; on a laptop, closing every app at once is called "restarting" or "shutting down." Google porting the phone logic over wholesale amounts to admitting one thing: it never really thought through the fact that a laptop and a phone are not the same thing. The root of that mismatch isn't one feature — it's a whole system stretched off a skeleton designed for touchscreens and apps.
As for "should I be mad at Slack or Google" — the very dilemma is the answer. When a platform can't guarantee the install of a common third-party tool, and users are forced to investigate "whose fault is this," it has already told you it isn't ready to ship. A friendly heads-up: this generation of Googlebook looks like an engineering prototype Google rushed out — and it's asking you to pay to find the bugs for it.
Source: The Verge