While it seems somewhat ludicrous to be picking holes in the business plan of a huge global success story like Google, their unveiling of their new Chromebook Pixel - a touchscreen laptop - certainly raises at least small questions relating to the direction they are headed.
The new Pixel has been developed as Google continue to try and gain market share in the laptop market and various technology sectors. Regular Chrome laptops are selling better than ever before, so it is understandable that a new and exciting product would be used to capture the imagination. At the same time, everyone knows that tablets and other mobile devices are quickly rendering laptops 'so last century,' so why would they be investing huge sums trying to win in a market that probably won't exist in 10 years' time?
The Competition
This question is brought into even greater focus when we look at the specifications of the new Pixel. Yes, it has touch screen, but that is really about all you can say about it. It has much less storage than an Apple Mac Book Air, yet costs more than that product as well as a Windows Surface tablet, which has a keyboard pre-attached so it can be used as either a laptop or a mobile device. The best that Techcrunch could do was call it "arguably the best looking laptop ever made,"but who is going to be bowled over by aesthetics when the performance isn't that great? It is not as if calling the Pixel attractive diminishes the other products in anyway, your MacBook isn't suddenly going to start looking shoddy and ten years out of date. The fact that Google's Nexus tablets are competitively priced to grab the market share in that area is well documented, and appears to be working. The problem they have now is that for anyone wanting to use their products, there is a huge leap from a tablet to this new product.
Glass Explorers
Perhaps the most curious thing about this is that we have heard about it shortly after further details about the company's Glass Explorers have been released, and a competition has been launched to become part of the testing group for the product. In the space of little more than 24 hours, Google has gone from talking about a product that has everyone around the world excited to something that should arguably have been scrapped as soon as it was discussed.
This moves us to the ultimate question of whether Google are focusing too much energy across too many frontiers now. Of course, one questionable product is not going to blow a hole in the balance sheet of the business, but it still leaves us wondering why they felt it was necessary to persevere with it. Granted, the Surface was only released last year, but they have known for years what they are up against in terms of competition from Apple.
Google remain the kings of search, a powerhouse of innovation, and are continuing to be an emerging force in social media. Perhaps laptops should be best left alone.
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