Google is ready to take a swing at laptops... again. The company has had a lot of success in phones, but it has struggled to parlay that into an effective strategy for larger screens. Chromebooks have been fine as a budget option, but it seems like Google has accepted they'll never compete with macOS or Windows. That's where Googlebooks come in. These new Android-powered laptops are intended to be "real" computers, featuring premium hardware, on-device apps, and powerful development tools.

After the Googlebook reveal at I/O this year, Google's partners are now ready to sell you one. The first Googlebooks are available from several OEMs that have been making Chromebooks over the years, but don't expect Chromebook pricing. There's only one model under a grand, and the rest are well above that.

Familiar hardware

The bulk of Chromebooks have been budget machines, and they looked the part. Googlebooks, however, feature bright OLED screens, metal builds, big haptic trackpads, and the Glowbar. All the machines have this illuminated bar on the lid, but it doesn't do much for now. It lights up when the device boots and can display battery level, but Google says it's going to release an API for developers to add more features.

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Google's AI models may not be in the lead by most measures right now, but the company does have one key advantage: your data. If you're deep in the Google ecosystem, Gemini models have a lot of context on you already. Google's latest Google Labs experiment, known as CC, aims to expand that kind of customization to the whole family.

CC is an evolution of something that Google announced in 2025. The original CC eventually became Gemini's Daily Brief, which churns through the data in your Google account to offer daily action items and suggestions. The new CC has a similar goal, but it's designed to be a shared resource for up to six users in a family.

Google says that CC has its own Google account, allowing each family member to interact with it (or not) as they choose. For example, CC only sees emails from its connected users if they are explicitly shared. You can do that by designating certain addresses as always available to the agent—something like school scheduling emails. You can also send content to CC via email or Google Chat. The agent can even monitor a shared Google Drive folder, into which you can dump invitations, documents, and other content.

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