Google Hardware Makes Cuts To Laptop and Tablet Development, Cancels Products (arstechnica.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report from Business Insider claims that Google has axed "dozens" of employees from its laptop and tablet division. BI's sources describe the move as "roadmap cutbacks" and also say that Google will likely "pare down the portfolio" in the future. Google's Hardware division is run by Rick Osterloh and is expected to launch a game streaming console later this month. The division is responsible for the Pixel phones, Google Home speakers, the Chromecast, Google Wi-Fi, and lately, the Nest smart home division.
You could also call the "laptop and tablet" division the "Chrome OS" division. Both the Pixelbook and Pixel Slate ran Chrome OS, and they are the company's only products supporting that operating system. Is Chrome OS going to be OK? BI notes that manufacturing roles in the hardware division haven't changed, so in the short-term, Google's product lineup is likely to keep going. The report says that Google had "a bunch of stuff in the works" that now probably won't see the light of day. The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet. It's easy to imagine that the laptops and tablets -- which are Google Hardware's most expensive products -- were selling the worst.
You could also call the "laptop and tablet" division the "Chrome OS" division. Both the Pixelbook and Pixel Slate ran Chrome OS, and they are the company's only products supporting that operating system. Is Chrome OS going to be OK? BI notes that manufacturing roles in the hardware division haven't changed, so in the short-term, Google's product lineup is likely to keep going. The report says that Google had "a bunch of stuff in the works" that now probably won't see the light of day. The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet. It's easy to imagine that the laptops and tablets -- which are Google Hardware's most expensive products -- were selling the worst.
Random guess (Score:3)
Microsoft adopts Chrome software, maybe Google's adopting Surface hardware?
Maybe sell more affordable gear? (Score:3)
While at Google, working on Chrome team, we could get a Chromebook Pixel (the original ones) to use and "eat the dogfood". Lovely device, even when it was like four year old, so when I left I set out to replace it. I ended up with an Asus Chromebook Flip C302A, the second option was a Samsung Chromebook Pro. Why not a newer Chromebook Pixel or Pixelbook? Because they cost 2x as much for minimal advantage.
Do I wish I had 8GB of RAM? Sure! But 8GB of RAM runs around $60. If they had had an offering in the $600 range, or maybe $700, I'd have probably went for it.
Unfortunately, they have the last laugh, since Apple has decided to cripple their laptop keyboard and port arrays, so now I find myself with Windows laptops in the house. Sigh.
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Now for the cheaper ones, there are markets for those. Schools and businesses (we sell a ton of them to retail chains in place of laptops) will keep at least a few players in business.
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I don't know why they bother with hardware
To entrench their software / cloud ecosystem, Anonymous Coward. They're not making hardware for hardware's sake.
Looks like your 20% time is up, hardware team (Score:2)
Turns out that all Google projects are really just 20% side projects at this point, if someone takes up racketball an entire hardware line is out.
An ad company (Score:3)
Attention deficit (Score:4, Interesting)
Attention deficit disorder. Google seems to have lost the ability to see any project through from beginning to end. I look forward to the Google console fiasco, should be about as popular as Google+ given the depth to which Google Smart People[tm] tend to understand or care about actual people.
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jacked up the price and added a huge notch
How'd that Apple envy work out for them? Good thing Samsung in a sudden outbreak of common sense showed everybody how to do it right.
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Google hires the smartest idiots in the world.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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It’s actually up to Intel to work out the problems in their BT firmware, though Google can be blamed for using the same BT model in the Pixel Slate despite knowing the problems experienced by the Pixelbook.
Google does its best to kill the Android tablet (Score:2)
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