Switcher 2026: Googlebook Regressions Make This Platform a Non-Starter ⭐

Moving between personal computing platforms is interesting. At a high level, most are familiar enough that you can get up and running pretty quickly. But as the transition continues, you will run into many small issues. Most won't completely block your shift, but they do add up, and the cumulative effect of multiple things not working can be a real blocker. 
I move between personal computing platforms all the time, and though you may think that this makes doing so easier, it can also amplify the problems. But I figured that Googlebook would be different. Meaning that my experiences with Android and Chrome OS--and Apple's mobile platforms--would be enough to put this over the top.
But now I'm not so sure. With the iPad finally picking up sophisticated new capabilities last year in iPadOS 26 that made that long-neglected platform viable as a productivity laptop when used with a Magic Keyboard or similar keyboard case, I saw a simpler future emerge. And so I was excited to learn of Google's plan to adapt Android for laptops. And as more details emerged, it seemed like this new platform, called Googlebook, would likewise be a viable, mobile-based new option for those who want to get work done and not be bogged down by the complexities of Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Googlebook has one major advantage over the iPad: It was designed for laptops. The iPad is a touch-first slate of glass, a tablet, first and foremost, with its productivity experiences being optional and not always optimal. But that's just in theory. For the reasons noted above--the death by a thousand cuts that is the cumulative impact of multiple small issues--Googlebook is, for the moment, less viable to me as a productivity laptop than is my iPad Pro with its Magic Keyboard.
This will change. Of that, I am certain. But Googlebook is a bit like Windows 11 in that, yes, it resembles its predecessor--a Chromebook Plus laptop, basically--while also arriving with functional regressions that may or may not be problematic depending on your needs and expectations. And the reasons for these regressions are often identical, where both Google and Microsoft rewrote some interfaces from scratch and tried to simplify them. In doing so, they lost features that some users came to rely on. Hilarity ensues. 
With Windows 11, the Taskbar was the poster child for these regressions, and it took Microsoft five years to fix the regressions it introduced in that interface. With Googlebook, the regressions are spread throughout the system, waiting for you to confusingly click around wondering where the features you want are hiding. But they're not hiding. They're just not there.
Consider the Files app, which is the Googlebook equivalent of File Explorer in Windows. Here, I've already found several regressions. They are:
Pin favorite locations in the sidebar.  In Chrome OS, Windows 11, macOS, Linux, and iPad, I can pin local or cloud-based folders in the file management apps's sidebar so I can go there...