Switcher 2026: Initial Thoughts on Googlebook ⭐️

While an iPad is incredibly versatile and can be used like a laptop, Googlebook will have some advantages too. Key among them, it’s literally a laptop and is thus a more direct alternative to Windows 11.

📲 The question has arisen

It’s impossible to have this discussion without addressing that age old debate in the personal computing space: Is it better to take a full-featured desktop OS and try to slim it down to create a simpler, smaller OS, or is it better to start small and scale up, adding sophistication as you go?

Theoretically, either approach should work. And history shows us that Apple did both successfully: It took Mac OS X, a big and thorny desktop OS, stripped away everything unnecessary for phones, added multitouch and other device-specific capabilities to make iOS, a mobile platform, and then later scaled that up (and down, go figure) into related platforms like iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and more. But Microsoft was less successful. It tried to scale down desktop Windows many times, starting with Windows CE in the late 1990s and ending with Windows RT in 2012, but those efforts ultimately failed. Windows 11 on Arm is what it is today because of that history.

Google is different. And its approach to personal computing platforms is fascinating to me. One might argue that Google simply copied Apple when it started down this path with Android, as it initially targeted phones and was reset in the wake of the iPhone launch in 2007. And like Apple, Google scaled Android up (and down) to other platforms, in this case Wear OS, Google TV, Android Auto, Android XR, ChromeOS, and now Googlebook. But Google also does things like Microsoft in that it offers a more open platform for developers and licenses its OSes to hardware maker partners, giving customers more choice.

I used to make this observation a lot in the 2010s, but it’s still true today: In the client computing space, Google is in many ways the new Microsoft.

🏁 Positioning

One thing that really resonates with me is the way Google is positioning Googlebook. Where ChromeOS was created to address the unique needs of the cloud era of personal computing, Googlebook was created to address this new AI era. This isn’t just marketing: As I noted recently in Switcher 2026: ChromeOS and Chromebooks for the Win ⭐️, rewatching the original ChromeOS launch event all these years later is a refreshing reminder of how differently—how Googly–the company approached the laptop space.

Now, over 15 years later, Google is hitting reset on this device type again and it is approaching the problem in a similar fashion, just adjusted for today. Obviously, there is some marketing involved: The notion that Google is transforming Android from an operating system to an intelligence system is perhaps a little too on point, a little too cute. But consider the following.

First, recall that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella once infamously said that he felt that Copilot would become the new Start menu, the place where users would literally get started on new tasks.

Second, know that where Copilot has been nothing but a failure for Microsoft, Gemini is in a great place and Google is broadly deploying Gemini-based features that users actually want across its stack. Which, incidentally, is as strong with consumers as it is with businesses.

Put another way, Microsoft promises AI that no one seems to want, but Google has been rolling out AI that everyone seems to want. So while GoogleBook might be viewed as just the latest in a long string of attempts by Google at getting the laptop right, it might also be viewed as the strongest new competition to face Windows in a long time. Only time will tell.

Speaking of which, it’s natural to focus on whether a mobile platform like Android can even compete head-to-head with a mature desktop platform like Windows 11. My stance is that the iPad already proves this is possible, but of course those looking for a one-to-one functional equivalency will always be able to point to deficiencies. Ignoring the Apple haters for a moment, however, perhaps we’re not framing this correctly. Where some see mobile vs. desktop, perhaps the correct way to look at this is modern vs. legacy. Just a thought.

👍 A few more questions answered

My earlier article, Googlebook Answers Some Questions, Raises Others ⭐️, was based on the information that Google provided in a press briefing ahead of the live The Android Show event at which it unveiled a sneak peek at Googlebook. As the title of that article suggests, I had questions. And still do. We have to wait for the full story, but more information has emerged since the briefing. Including…

The OS is not called Googlebook. We know that Aluminum OS is the codename for the OS running on Googlebook. And we know that that’s not the final name. Sometime later this year, Google will unveil the OS branding. My guesses include just using Android, or maybe going with GoogleOS or GeminiOS.

Some existing Chromebooks will be upgradable to become Googlebooks. I assume this means mostly or exclusively Chromebook Plus devices since this initial release seems to be a replacement for that platform and not (yet) all Chromebooks.

x86 will be supported. There are a few Chromebooks running on Arm chipsets today, but most of them, including Chromebook Plus, are on x86. And given the above note about upgradeability, that tells me that Googlebook will likely support x86 too. Which is too bad, but you can’t argue with the installed base. Also, in an interview, Google vice president John Maletis specifically says that they are working with “Intel, Qualcomm, [and] MediaTek.” So there you go.

New Chromebooks will come out after Googlebook launches. This is interesting and it suggests a years-long transition before Googlebook inevitably replaces Chromebooks and ChromeOS broadly. Recall that Chromebooks are supported for 10 years, so whatever transition is not happening overnight.

Googlebook will use desktop Chrome. I added a note about this to the previous article too, but one of my big concerns with Googlebook is that Google would burden it with the normal, mobile version of Chrome in Android; to me, the full-featured desktop Chrome in ChromeOS is a big advantage. Here, it seems that Googlebook will in fact use desktop Chrome, as they noted it would support extensions and the full experience. So that’s good news.

Samsung wasn’t mentioned. There was a leak of an Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Book recently, and Samsung is inarguably Google’s biggest partner in the Android space. So it is interesting that Samsung didn’t make the list of PC makers that will release Googlebooks this fall. And it’s interesting that this never occurred to me at the time, too. But Samsung and Google are such big partners that they will likely do something together later this year. This isn’t a slight, I bet.

⬆️ There will be more

This week’s explosion of news and speculation is just the start, and I’m fascinated by how much attention Googlebook has received given how low-boil Android has been for the past few years. That’s not Google’s fault, it’s a mature platform and Google is obviously going gangbusters on Gemini. But in the same way that Microsoft’s promise to fix the Windows 11 “pain points” has generated an incommensurate amount of attention with the mainstream tech press, so to speak, so has this. And that’s good.

When will we learn more?

Google I/O is next week, so I assume we’ll get more information then on the developer end. But it’s worth mentioning that there was a “developer’s cut” of the Android Show I/O Edition event that provides some interesting information, even for those who are not developers. And Android 17, notably, is the release (coming any month now) when Google finally forces developers to support big screen devices like Googlebook with sophisticated automatic layouts. This is timed nicely to the Googlebook launch window.

Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess when Google will reveal more general information about this exciting new personal computing platform. But we know that new devices will ship by the end of the year. So we have just a few months to go before we have devices and all our questions answered.

I can’t wait. More soon.