Stefan Mileschin

Axes team responsible for new one

Google has canceled the next version of its Pixelbook laptop and axed the team responsible for building it.

The move is odd given that the device was far along in development and expected to debut next year. Apparently it was a Google cost cutting measure and Pixel team members have been transferred elsewhere inside the company.

Google has insisted that it would keep the Pixelbook going. Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh that Google was going to do Pixelbooks in the future, but he admitted that the Chromebook market has changed since 2017 when the original (and best) Pixelbook launched and ChromeOS based machines were lasting longer. Google originally designed the Pixelbook as cheap disposable hardware and now they are expensive enough to be worth keeping.

"The ChromeOS market is that it simply doesn’t need Google the way it once did," he said.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has been saying for months that he intends to slow down hiring and cut some projects across the company. “In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes,” he wrote in a July memo.

https://fudzilla.com/news/55474-goog...xelbook-laptop