Googlebooks are coming for your Mac

We tried out the new Googlebooks, which are essentially Chromebooks evolved with an Android elemental stone. They're made by Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and Asus (not Google), but all have the new Googlebook OS, heavy Android phone and Gemini integration, and a built-in "Glowbar." Laptop reviewer Antonio G. Di Benedetto went hands-on with the new devices, and reports back to guest host David Imel. Further reading: ⁠iPhone owners can now submit claims in Apple’s $250 million Siri AI settlement⁠ ⁠The M5 Ultra Mac Studio tears through our benchmark tests⁠ ⁠Gemini went rogue and hacked 3 companies⁠ ⁠I got to see Google’s wild ideas about the future of laptops⁠ ⁠These are the first five Googlebook laptops⁠ ⁠Googlebooks feel like the first laptops built for Android owners⁠ ⁠The long dream of the Googlebook⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Google's new, new operating system. I'm David Amel. Today, we're talking to Verge laptop reviewer Antonio Di Benedetto about Google's new Google Book project. This is a new initiative from Google to develop a premium laptop experience that takes the best of your smartphone and integrates it deeply with a high-end laptop. Antonio recently went hands-on with some of these laptops, so I'm going to ask him about what's new, who this is for, and if he thinks Google can seriously compete with Apple this time. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 21st, 2026. Apple Intelligence claims have officially opened.

• 1:49David Pierce?

  If you live in the US and purchased an iPhone 15, 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model between June 10th, 2024 and March 29th, 2025, you can now file a claim to receive between $25 and $95 in compensation. This comes after a class-action lawsuit alleged that Apple created a "clear and reasonable consumer expectation" that the new AI features previewed at WWDC 2024 would launch on the iPhone 16, which instead launched with a more limited set of features. If you fit that description, you can submit a claim for compensation until December 21st, 2026. Next, our $12,300 M5 Ultra Max Studio review is out, and as expected, it absolutely tore through our benchmark tests.

• 2:32David Pierce?

  Our nearly maxed-out M5 Ultra came out about 30% faster than our similarly spec'd M3 Ultra from last year in both single-core and multi-core synthetic CPU tests. On a heavier GPU rendering test to Cinebench, the M5 Ultra scored 63% higher. And finally, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google's Gemini model broke containment in May and hacked three separate companies. The incident happened while third-party firm Irregular was testing its capabilities. The model brute-forced a password to access the company and then stopped. Google didn't disclose the hack until now because it didn't consider it an instance of misalignment. You can read more at theverge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 21st, 2026.

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• 5:44David Pierce?

  Antonio Di Benedetto, welcome to The Vergecast.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Hello. Thanks for having me again.

• 5:48David Pierce?

  So, we're talking about Google Books today. You recently did a hands-on of all of these Google Books. I believe there are three or four of them. There's maybe five. How many are there?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  There are five.

• 5:59David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there's ones from Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and Asus.

• 6:05David Pierce?

  Okay, so this is more of a OS experience, right? This is not the Chromebook that we have all known and loved, these cheap laptops that are basically Chrome in a computer. Can you explain what is a Google Book and why is Google doing this whole project?

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's definitely interesting, and it's something that I came to, like, months ago when they first teased it, I was like, why does this exist? What is the point of this? And now, having seen them in person a little bit and experienced them, poked and prodded a little bit, it's like, okay, I'm maybe starting to get this, and maybe this could be kind of cool. But basically, in nutshell, this is like a new swing at Chromebooks, kind of, but it's essentially kind of a blending of Chrome OS and Android, but I mean, really, at its core, it's Android. So, these laptops run Android. They feel a bit like Chromebooks, and they run multiple chips. You've got options from Intel with Intel Panther-like chips.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  You've got Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, and there's supposed to be MediaTek chips coming at some point later. Five different OEMs, so it's very much like a partnership thing, and it's all united by the software. And the software experience may feel kind of Chromebook-ish, but what's actually the most appealing thing is that the way it interacts with an Android phone, right? You have certain features that if you have an Android phone, and you need to have an Android phone, that you can kind of pair them together and interact with them in a way that really, no one else is really doing to this level yet.

• 7:37David Pierce?

  Okay, so can you still use these computers without an Android phone? You're being very specific there.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can, but I don't think there'd be much point. At least, you wouldn't gain much from it like you would if you have an Android phone. Like, if you have an iPhone, and I ask this question, like, what do you do? And there is essentially just like a link to iOS app, and it helps you with some message relaying, but it's nothing like what you can do when you have an Android phone paired, which I guess I should cut to the chase on, like, the things that this can do.

• 8:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, what exactly does it do with your phone?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  All right, so it's nothing completely crazy, but it's just better integrated than what we normally see, even on like macOS and iOS. So, there's a few hallmark features. The files. You open the Files app, and your phone files are just there. Like, it's loaded up on the sidebar, just like another drive. And you can click there, and all your phone files are there. So, it's like someone sent you something, and you download it, or you download something on your phone. You don't have to, like, email it to yourself or find some other way to, like, get it over to your laptop. It's just there, and you can pluck it and paste it in, share it.

• 8:45David Pierce?

  Do you know exactly how that is working? Is it some sort of mirroring? Is it transferring the files? Because if you're not on Wi-Fi, is that going to go up into the cloud and you take a lot of data? Like, how does it do that?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  That, they didn't specify, so it'll be something we definitely explore. And when we review these, I should also say, at any point, but I should say now, I guess, we don't have review units. And it's definitely like, not to get too inside-baseball-y, but it's whenever a company doesn't have, like, review units early, and there's like, oh, we're going to launch it on October 4th, and after that is when review units will come. And it's like, hmm, that doesn't always instill confidence, but yeah, I digress.

• 9:23David Pierce?

  This is something I find a little interesting. Google is taking pre-orders for Google Books, is that correct?

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're taking pre-orders now, and they ship on the 4th, or they arrive at shores on the 4th, and we'll get review units sometimes on the 4th or later. The 4th is a Sunday, so it's like, right? I think it's Sunday. So, it's like the 5th or later.

• 9:43David Pierce?

  Okay, so when you go on the website to preorder a Google Book, do you get to pick the laptop that you're preordering? Do people really know about how these computers work? I mean, I've been on their site, I've seen what they're showing it as, but just like a scrollable page that kind of gives the highlights of what a Google Book is doesn't seem like it's really informing customers of what the experience they should expect is. How do you think Google's angling this?

• 10:08Speaker 03

  It's hard to say. I think these, again, just like from what I've observed in the briefing and everything like that, this seems like it may be coming in a little hot. I mean, frankly, even like OEM reps that I was talking to on the side, like, were kind of at the event, we're like, oh, we just got the hardware like today or yesterday. And it's like, so I think this is all kind of coming together. It seems like maybe late, or maybe whatever, but I can't speculate too much. Point is, though, like, this does some cool stuff, and we'll need to know a lot more later. I mean, especially when we test them. And the reason I think like this actually may be kind of cool, even though like this is like...

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Google, we can't always trust Google with like sticking through with things and like, you know, or whatever the direction they may take things and Chromebooks already exist. And we don't know a lot about, you know, where Chromebooks will go when now Google Books are in the fold, aside from they've promised 10 years of service. But here's what like the other features that are actually seem pretty cool about this. Like again, going back to you have an Android phone paired to a Google Book. You have the file structure, but then also like probably the bigger, the bigger things are like, you know, you have this feature called continue on where if you're using an app on your phone, it just kind of like hangs out in the bottom bar on a Google Book

• 11:30Speaker 03

  and you can just click it and it'll just hand over to the laptop, right? You know, like whether it's from like the native app to a native app on the Google Book that's installed or native app to a web app, you can just take over from, from where you left off. And that's a really cool feature that you can kind of interact with, you know, like start a task on your phone and be like, no, I need, I need a bigger screen.

• 11:51David Pierce?

  This is a laptop job, as we know.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like, that's, that's pretty cool. You don't normally get that kind of thing. And then, but generally any, any app you have on your phone is kind of also available on your laptop because since all Android based, you, whether, if you have an app installed on your phone, it actually will live on the Google Book in like a second app drawer, right? There's like the main app drawer, which has all the stuff you've installed. And then there's a second app drawer for your phone. And if you click on any of those, it'll just cast the app to your Google Book. And it's kind of like, you know, like we have a little bit of experience with this, like, you know, iPhone mirroring on iOS or iOS and macOS, but you know, that's like mirroring your whole phone screen.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  This is like going on like a per app basis.

• 12:39David Pierce?

  Right.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  So it's again, it's all interesting and intriguing. But I mean, we talked about like, who is it for? I, I was still like, the only answer I have so far is like someone who has like most likely a high-end Android phone, because these are not cheap devices. But they, what, I guess they don't want Windows, they don't want a Mac, so they're looking for alternative? That's mostly all I can think of.

• 13:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think that there was always a little bit of a tension with Chromebooks, right? Because Google sold Chromebooks in this way where there were ultra-cheap Chromebooks and those were probably the ones that moved the most. They sold them to schools, they sold them to people that just wanted a laptop for things that they did online. But then there was sort of a move towards really high-quality Chromebooks that were over a thousand dollars, very expensive, but at the end of the day, were still kind of just running Chrome. And they did evolve Chrome OS over time to be able to run Android apps natively. But at the same time, you still had to download those Android apps from the Play Store onto your Chromebook. It was a separate instance. So I can see the appeal of just like casting your phone to your laptop if you're the type of person that uses your phone for almost everything, but sometimes you want laptop tasks.

• 13:48David Pierce?

  My question to you here is like, it seems that Google is trying to have some sort of a barometer for quality with these laptops, right? They're all around a thousand or over a thousand dollars. Can you break down the different models and what are the standards that Google has for the manufacturers that want to make these laptops?

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there don't seem to be like standards, but like, there's a whole lot of like vibesy elements to what Google's doing here. And like, and it even goes like, we, I guess, is there a base minimum spec? There is no base minimum spec for these laptops. Like, they said like, you know, like they have touchscreens, but there's no guarantee that they're always going to have touchscreens. They have 16 gigs of RAM. There's no guarantee that, you know, they're always going to have 16 gigs of RAM or more. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if 8GB models come later when, you know, they need to have some lower cost options.

• 14:34David Pierce?

  You don't think it's something that they're mandating?

• 14:36Speaker 03

  It doesn't seem to be, at least, and they haven't told us when we asked, they didn't, they didn't say there was any kind of baseline spec.

• 14:41David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  So I don't, I, it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of questions, but all the names sound exactly the same.

• 14:47David Pierce?

  Of the laptops?

• 14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, like the lowest cost one is the Acer Google Book 14, which is very much like an Acer Spin kind of, you know, Chromebook.

• 14:58David Pierce?

  Tablet.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's the only convertible two-in-one. It's, it starts at $900. Acer reps have told us that's like a limited time offer and we don't exactly know what even that means, like.

• 15:08David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  How long will it be $900 for? I don't know, but you know, Google says these Google Books start at $899. Then there's a Dell XPS Google Book, which is basically a rehoused XPS 13 in a different color. And it's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip instead of Intel Wildcat Lake. That's a little more, it's like $1199 starting at, again, these are all starting at prices. You can configure these with more and get more expensive, of course. There's an HP, I think it's just called Google Book 14. Another Snapdragon chip, again, like $1299, I believe that one is. There's Lenovo's, also $1299, Google Book 15, so it's a little bit larger.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  And that one has like a little, if I recall correctly, that was a little more ports. A bunch of these have OLEDs, some of them have like haptic trackpads, but not all. So again, nothing is really, I, there's no threading the needle like, oh, this is, it's got to have this, this, this. Like Chromebook Plus did have some.

• 16:07David Pierce?

  Minimum spec requirements.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, and some things you expected on it. These are all nice, they're all nice laptops. There's all, the last one is the Asus Google Book 14. Again, I think it's just his name. You know, I don't know why, I don't know why Google insists on all the names being the same. But again, an OLED screen, very lightweight, at least that one. Like some of them have some little standouts, like their haptic trackpads or more ports or, or the convertible for the Acer. The, the Asus is like very lightweight. It's like, only weighs like 2.2 pounds, 1 kilo or something like that. But they're, all the hardware is like, it all feels familiar because they're all pretty much based on like existing, I think the Asus, for example, is like an expert book.

• 16:49David Pierce?

  Right.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  And it's just now with Google Book OS.

• 16:52David Pierce?

  One thing that I find kind of strange here is that they're only working with ODMs to make these computers. There's no Google-made Google Book. Do you know why that is? That seems a little bit weird when they pivoted a lot of Android to be sort of centered around the Pixel phone.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know why. I am kind of of two minds where I would, I would, I kind of wanted to see that like halo device, that flagship device, kind of lead the charge. But I am also kind of like looking at it across this and it's like five somewhat even-ish laptops, give or take little bits here and there. And it's like, maybe that's fine. You know, Google has made their own, Google has made its own Chromebooks in the past, obviously, even like Pixel ones.

• 17:38David Pierce?

  Pixel Book, the Pixel Book Go. They had the Google-made laptops and now they just are not doing that anymore?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Who knows if that may just be, this may just be the precursor to them making one of those at, at some point. Or I don't know, maybe they're just feeling things out and see how it goes. But, you know, it's, it's obviously easier for these OEMs to make, just kind of remix an existing laptop versus.

• 18:04David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  Google spinning up an entire new model.

• 18:07David Pierce?

  Yeah, it almost reminds me of like the HTC 1M8 Google Play Edition, right?

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Oh, man. That's deep cut and I used to own that phone. That's awesome.

• 18:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  I miss those days. So yeah, maybe, maybe this can, I mean, again, maybe this will be like that, like just find this niche and enthusiasts and like, you know, people who really like the idea of just not being on Windows or Mac and having something that works for them and works really well with their Android phones specifically, but who knows? We'll see. But it, that's, it's the interesting premise that, yeah, Google just, it's just bowing out of the hardware this side. We'll see if that holds.

• 18:45David Pierce?

  Okay. Well, much like Google redesigned Android to be based around Gemini, it seems that they are also sort of redesigning Chrome OS to be around Gemini with this Google OS. Can you talk to me about this new magic cursor feature that I keep seeing? They have this, this banner on their site that says, "Intelligence is the new spec", clearly pointing to Gemini. And then they have a little cursor with a rainbow around it that they shake. What, what exactly is happening here? What is this feature?

• 19:11Speaker 03

  So you wiggle the cursor and you can pull up Gemini on pretty much anything. You know, you could just like have it, like look at stuff on your screen. You can just prompt it via the cursor, right? You just wiggle it and then just start typing something away at it to ask a question. So it's baked further into the OS. And yeah, you, I mean, we can't avoid Gemini, right? If it's a Google thing, just like kind of how it is on Android, well, now the same on Google Books. And yeah, so you wiggle it, pull it up and then type away, but it's not exactly clear when things are happening on-device and when things are going up to the cloud. You know, obviously all the chips that they're using have NPUs, so they can do some on-device AI, but you know, there's got to be stuff happening, going to the cloud almost all the time.

• 19:53David Pierce?

  Yeah. Okay, so you wiggled the cursor around. Is that on images you see? Is that on text you see? Is this like anything on your screen you can practically interact with Gemini with? Is that the idea?

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Basically, yeah. Like, the part that was kind of cool is you can, you know, like, you can have, you can have multiple images loaded right into it to like, you know, and do a prompt based on what you're, what you're feeding it. So you can do like multiple documents, multiple images. Guess that could be cool and helpful. Or you could just be straight up text.

• 20:25David Pierce?

  Okay, so it seems to me that Google is sort of trying to get you to interact with Gemini by putting things you see on the web into a context window and either chat about those things or generate images about those things. Would you consider that their motive here?

• 20:40Speaker 03

  Basically, I mean, and like just give you faster, quicker access to Gemini. And they also are putting in a couple of recent Android features like Rambler, where it'll do speech transcription with like, you know, you could, you could just go at it and just like speak your mind, like stream of consciousness and it'll remove all the ums and ohs and it does a very good job. That's in Google Books as well, as well as the Create My Widget, where you can kind of vibe code your own little personal home screen widget on a Google Book.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. I know what you're thinking. It feels like you've blinked and suddenly it's October. Before you start asking yourself where the year went, ask yourself if you're ready for the holidays. If the answer isn't a confident yes, don't sweat it. Prime Big Deal Days is here, and that means two days of epic deals with new deals every day. October 6th and 7th only, Prime members can save on home decor, fitness gear, electronics, toys, and so much more. You can get something for everyone on your list and maybe something special for yourself, too. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Sometimes the best gifts are the ones you just give, well, because. I'm constantly inspired by the people around me, and when I see something that reminds me of someone, I love being able just to get it for them. Whether I'm planning a gift weeks in advance, or I just suddenly think of something at the last minute. Prime makes it easier to find something that feels right and get it when I need it. Prime Big Deal Days is here. Shop deals now.

• 22:54David Pierce?

  A lot of these features to me feel kind of tailored for business users. You know, like I see people show up to the coffee shop all the time with their HP laptops or their Lenovo laptops, and they have all this business software on them. They're writing emails all day, they're doing presentations and stuff like that. Many of the Gemini features, including Rambler, including, you know, putting things in Gemini, making images and graphics feel tailored to business users. Would you say that this kind of feels like a business play? Or does this seem like they're really going after consumers here?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  I think they are going after consumers. It's hard to say because like a lot of, like as we hear about on the Vergecast and talk about the Vergecast a lot, it's like a lot of AI stuff is kind of enterprise focused, or it can't, it seems like it can't escape the appeal of the enterprise. So I could see like, maybe there is some kind of play here for that, too. But I think they're looking at, I think they're looking at consumers. But it's hard to say. I mean, they're, they're talking about wanting to reinvent the laptop. And, you know, it's like big, big boards, big claims. And they've got some interesting and some cool stuff here, but a lot, a lot of questions are open questions.

• 24:08David Pierce?

  Would you say this is like a true play at trying to create their version of the Apple ecosystem? Because it seems to me that they are trying to say you can still do most of these things, right? If you buy a Google Book, it comes with a year of Nvidia GeForce Now, so you can still stream high-quality games on it. That's not a limitation. Most of the stuff that you're doing online is going to be through Google services anyway. If you buy the Google Book, if you can stream your Android directly to your laptop. And they do have an edge on Apple here, right? Like, Apple has limited capabilities between moving things from your phone to your computer. Like, they have AirDrop, they have like iPhone mirroring, things like that. But it's not as integrated as the Android to Google Book integration. Do you think that they're going for Apple's throat here?

• 24:53Speaker 03

  I think that's what they want to do, and they want, and at the very least, they want to make, I think, just how, like, I'm sure they see how iPhone and Mac, like, someone who owns an iPhone and a Mac is, has some levels of integration and many reasons for staying within that ecosystem, within those walled gardens, because things talk to each other. And, you know, Google, it's like, they don't, they're blocked on that front, they can't interact with a Mac quite like an iPhone does. And then they don't have it fully on Windows either. So it's like, this is their way to make this more integrated ecosystem. And ideally, I would imagine then keeping more people on Android, keeping people on Android, and people using Android apps.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  You know, again, I think like, just thinking about how like, oh, you know, one of my hurdles with not using macOS or not using Windows is like, I need, I want to, no, I don't want, I need to use Lightroom Classic, like, just because I'm ingrained in it, right?

• 25:52David Pierce?

  Right.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  And this doesn't have Lightroom Classic, but it's like, oh, it has Lightroom, the mobile version. But it's like, it's a little bit better on the, on a desktop, on a Google Book, should be at least. I've used it a little bit on like Windows on ARM when, before Lightroom Classic was compatible, and I don't prefer that app at all. I much prefer to use Lightroom Classic, is what I'm used to. But it's like, okay, I can get by on that if I had to. And that's just something that you couldn't really do with Chromebooks. So it's, they are sort of overcoming some hurdles by unifying it on Android. But again, there's just so many questions and so much to see.

• 26:27David Pierce?

  It certainly seems like there's more here than there were with Chromebooks, because Chromebook was an idea of everything lives in the cloud anyway, just have your computer be in the cloud, it's the cloud computer, right? But then eventually they realized they had to start competing with the Apple ecosystem and the way that your phone interacts with it. So that's when they kind of bolted on Android compatibility onto Chromebooks, and you could download Android apps onto Chrome. This feels like the Fuchsia OS kind of idea where it's a, it's a merger of the two, your phone and your laptop are sort of the same thing. Would that seem accurate to you?

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there's been talks since going back to Fuchsia, and then there was the code name Aluminium, which they haven't, no one's confirmed, but it seems like, like Google won't confirm, but it seems like this is Aluminium, right? This is what's been talked about of unifying Chrome OS and, and Android. And yeah, this seems like their, their play at this finally.

• 27:22David Pierce?

  Yeah. There are a couple hardware things here that I find a little cute, and I think that people will like. One is there's this light bar on the top of all Google Books, it seems. It seems that this is a feature that they do make sure that everyone uses, right? Can you talk about this light bar? It's like an RGB bar, it does things when the computer does things.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  I, I, I mean, it is cute and fun. Like, I just look at it as like, okay, that's fun, but like, I don't know what it, I don't know what the point of it is. Like, they mentioned like, it will show battery life, but I couldn't, this is one of those things where like, at the briefing, like, I'm like, hey, but like, how does it show battery life?

• 27:58David Pierce?

  I think while it's charging, it shows sort of a charging animation.

• 28:01Speaker 03

  Right, I guess. That makes sense, except, you know, like, I was, I was asking reps and they didn't really know. But again, again, this, they just got their hardware, so I'll give them, I'll give them a break. But it seems like one of those things like that's, I don't know how many other ideas they have for it. I think charge level is a good one, probably the most useful one, actually, because like, once you're using the laptop, it's on the, it's on the lid, it's facing away from you. Actually, Lenovo was the only one that demoed something that would have a glow bar facing towards you. They have an optional mouse that like has its own glow bar. Now, their mouse, that, yeah, that light actually on their, on their mouse and their glow bar has its own, has to use Lenovo's Vantage software.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  So I guess it's just their own doing, but there's a lot TBD on how that'll work, just as there is, you know, a lot to be figured out on what the glow bar will be used for. But Google, this is one of those things where like, Google's just like, like, oh, like, and we're putting it out there and developers will be able to tinker with it, too. And it's like, I think they're kind of maybe wondering if developers will really figure out its main use cases aside from like, battery level.

• 29:03David Pierce?

  So the glow bar is not something that Google dictates what it can do, but the OEM does?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  I think, no, I think Google dictates, I think, I'm not, again, we're not, it's not exactly clear. It's like, I think, I think Google dictates it, or at least from the battery level and stuff like that, and it just glows Googly colors on the regular. But beyond that, it's not fully clear yet.

• 29:24David Pierce?

  Okay, there is another hardware key that seems to be on all these laptops. It's a Google key instead of like a Windows key or something like that. Can you tell me what the Google key does?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  It just opens the start menu, like, ah, yeah. It's actually the recent Chrome, I don't know how far back, but Chromebooks have, have a G key, too.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  So it's, I don't think anything super special. There's also the, there's also the quick insert key. It's something that they added on Chromebook Plus models a couple of years back, where it's like an all, it's like the caps lock key basically gives you like, one-click access to Gemini, which again, this is also kind of, kind of funny, because like, like the wiggle to, you know, shake, shake, shake the mouse cursor to pull up Gemini, like, there was already like a key to summon Gemini with the quick insert key.

• 30:11David Pierce?

  And it's like, when you wiggle it, you're wiggling it on top of an element on your screen, and you're telling Gemini I want to interact with this, right?

• 30:18Speaker 03

  You like wiggle it, it pulls up, and then you can click on what you want, or yeah. So it's, yeah, but it's all, again, I always keep coming back to like, it's all very Googly at how like, this is all kind of like, different ideas all thrown out there and like.

• 30:29David Pierce?

  They slam them into a product together.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. But ultimately, like, I think as far as I know, like, the G key seems the same as Chromebook pluses of recent years, and so does the quick insert key on the caps lock.

• 30:39David Pierce?

  Okay. It's interesting to me, when you buy one of these, it also includes a year of Google AI Pro with five terabytes of storage. Many of the things that come with these computers kind of are trying to get you into a cloud ecosystem. You know, there's GeForce Now that you get a year of, you get a year of AI Pro with five terabytes of storage, all these things. That is a very Chromebook-y idea, right? Like, let's do everything in the cloud. What is the value of having a minimum of 16 gigabytes of RAM? I mean, I know you said that's not a minimum forever, but that's what these laptops start at. Having specific like battery playback, specific power with these Snapdragon X Elite chips and Snapdragon Core Ultra, Intel Core Ultra chips.

• 31:23David Pierce?

  Do you think that these computers are going to be doing anything hardcore on them? Because, you know, GeForce Now is an online streamed service, most Google services are processing online. Is it just to run Android apps? Because it doesn't really seem like a computer with this kind of processing power needs to be doing those things.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it may have to do with like, who they're positioning these towards. And like, like, um, the president of Android ecosystem, Samir Samat, told me like, this day, like, he had in mind, like, someone that has like a Galaxy Z Fold 8, he actually had one on him. He's like, someone has like this kind of phone, like, we want this laptop for them. And, you know, that's an expensive phone, and this is, these are like, all like metal chassis, thin and light, pretty sleek. Maybe it does kind of go back to the whole business element, you know, that you talked about, maybe it's, it's a low-key play towards enterprise, you know, a slow burn. But they are talking about, you know, 10 years of, of 10 years of updates, software updates, so.

• 32:25David Pierce?

  10 years is a big ask, by the way.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  It is, yeah, who knows?

• 32:28David Pierce?

  It was already big that seven years, like, seven years on Pixel phones, but 10 years is a long time.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Exactly, that was, and they have already.

• 32:34David Pierce?

  Especially for Google, by the way.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  And they, they did that for Chromebooks, and that you can kind of understand, because it's like a, you know, whole thing with education. But, you know, here, I think it's a matter of like, You should, I guess you should go on, go big on, they want these to be like premium devices, right? That's why they're like a thousand dollars ish. And they're thin and light and they're metal and you know, they have OLEDs and touchscreens, you know? So I think they're, they want to start up here. It also gives Chromebook and Chromebook Plus's room for now, until they maybe trickle downwards in that direction. But it separates them more because I think what they're looking at is like, this is kind of a redo, a relook at Chrome, what Chromebooks could do,

• 33:17Speaker 03

  but with a higher ceiling, you know, it's like they can, there's, there's more potential here. And maybe that potential won't be realized until like, Google goes well beyond like the continue on feature and the cast my apps feature and whatever else they're having at launch. A big thing that was explained to me was that with this, they can speed up development of Google Books a lot more than they could Chromebooks. Like Chromebooks kind of lagged behind Android development and now it can kind of all be unified. So in some ways, this is like just as helpful for Google as it is for like a consumer that this really actually clicks with.

• 33:51David Pierce?

  Does this run Google OS or Android?

• 33:54Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, it's Android built on it, a Linux kernel, but it's called Google Book OS.

• 34:01David Pierce?

  Okay. Got it. So they're still going to have Chrome OS for, and they're still going to sell Chromebooks?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Yep. Especially, I mean, I think those may live on for who knows how long with that, especially with the education market.

• 34:12David Pierce?

  So now we have Chromebooks, Chromebook Plus and Google Books.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 34:17David Pierce?

  Cool.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, it's almost like Chromebook plus plus, right? Or like,

• 34:22David Pierce?

  Yeah. Pro Max.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, again, there's, I just keep coming back to like, there's tons of questions. There's lots to figure out and I don't, I have no idea, no idea if this is actually going to be like, successful. I mean, ultimately I care if it's good, you know, like when it comes time for the review, it's like, if it's good, like if it's a sales failure, like, no, unfortunately, we can't, we don't control that, whatever, man. Like it's just, but um, I'm looking forward to trying these. I gotta say, at least like, I thought this was pointless and I came back saying like, okay, maybe there's something here. There's a big swing. They, Google could easily just whiff. But we'll see.

• 35:00David Pierce?

  Yeah. All right. Well, Antonio D. Benedetto, thanks for joining us and we'll talk to you next time.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Hey, man. Thank you.

• 35:07David Pierce?

  Well, that's it for the Vergecast. Let us know what you think. Call the hotline 866 VERGE11 or email [email protected]. And to support everything we do here and to get ad-free podcasts, subscribe to The Verge. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Vergecast is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. See you next time. Rock and roll.