Google recently made waves with its announcement Googlebook platform. Bringing elements of Chrome OS and Android together with plenty of artificial intelligence features, Chromebooks are the company’s attempt to win over laptop users after gaining traction mainly in the entry-level education market.
These AI features, grouped under the all-new Magic Indicator, seem to be the main selling point that Google wants you to focus on, but it’s a misguided attempt in my opinion. This is especially unfortunate because Google has done some things right with its existing platform, Chrome OS, but the company is investing in a feature that no one clearly wants rather than solving its biggest problems.
Users don’t want AI
At least, it’s not
The purpose of this article is not to discuss the merits of generative AI as a whole. There are many different tools that differ in their usefulness, but let’s leave that aside. The real problem with Magic Pointer is that it’s simply not an AI feature that people want, and it’s certainly not the kind of tool that sells people on laptops.
Whenever you read about AI tools and capabilities, even here on XDA, when are the internals in the operating system interesting? How many articles even cover these features beyond the initial announcement or release? All the interesting AI use cases reside in apps that users have to download, and they require some setup to really unlock meaningful capabilities. You can combine certain instruments with your notes to create a tutorial, or use Claude to help you identify songs and easily find them on Spotify, etc. But none of these have anything to do with the built-in features of any operating system.
It’s not for lack of trying; Microsoft has been improving Copilot in Windows 11 for years, and as of 2024, the company even introduced Copilot+, using on-device artificial intelligence to provide features that integrate with various aspects of Windows. In fact, a key one of these features is very similar to Magic Pointer, which has been around for over a year at this point. You can hold down the Windows key and right-click anything to have your computer analyze the screen and give you options about what to do with what you’re looking at. With the Magic Pointer, you’re shaking the cursor, but it’s pretty much the same idea.
When was the last time you saw anyone care about Copilot+ laptops? Did this ability, or others like Recall, even influence the decision to buy a laptop? Even Dell, the manufacturer of the laptops in question, adopted earlier this year consumers simply don’t buy laptops for these features.
You might consider this another classic Microsoft blunder, but in fact, things aren’t much better in Apple’s camp. The company has talked about Apple Intelligence here and there at WWDC and other events, but aside from these specific sections in their respective presentations, you haven’t heard of anyone actively using any of these features. Frankly, it’s almost baffling that Google chose to make this the main focus for its new laptop platform in 2026.
Chromebooks have more serious vulnerabilities
PC users want PC software
If Google wants to make its PC platform more reliable, the company needs to understand that the biggest driver for users is apps. Chrome OS has always been built on the glorified web apps, and it’s true that you can do a lot with just the browser. Most of the computer users these days spend most of their time in the browser. Until they don’t, and that’s where the problems begin.
Over the years, Google has improved things quite a bit. Support for Android apps has added more capabilities to Chromebooks, and the Linux subsystem for developers allows users to install and run Linux apps, although it requires some work that most people don’t want to go through.
But without these apps, your Chromebook and Googlebook will be limited to the same things you can do on your phone, and that’s a big problem. Android has very powerful apps for many things, but not the PC versions of Photoshop and Lightroom for Android. They don’t have the same capabilities or the familiarity of having the tools you always use. If you’re interested in streaming live on YouTube, there’s no OBS for Chromebooks, no DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere Pro for editing videos. There are tools alternatives to these, but they are not the tools that people know or want.
To make a Googlebook a working laptop, it needs to run PC software, and that means mastering Linux. Running Linux apps on Chrome OS (or Aluminum OS) should be a no-brainer, and it shouldn’t be a “developer” setting or anything like that. this the way to get desktop apps on these devices, and Google should make it as seamless as possible. In fact, Google should contribute to or learn from Wine to make Windows apps even more usable on Googlebook.
Not only that, but Google has a virtually limitless amount of resources to invest in it if it wants to. Creating a more seamless experience with the app store and even helping companies port apps to Linux should be the most obvious step. If anyone can push companies like Adobe, Canva, and others to build tools for their platform, it’s Google. Probably won’t do it again everything a Windows PC could, but it would be closer to the workflow PC users are used to.
Valve got it
It takes effort, but it is possible
More broadly, the problem with Google’s PC efforts so far is that customers expect to be drawn to the differences in Chrome OS. For affordable devices, the lightweight approach certainly has its appeal, but when it comes to truly desirable laptops, it clearly doesn’t work. For this to happen, the company needs to meet customers where they are, and PC users want PC features.
This is an easy lesson to learn from Valve. In 2015, Valve introduced the Steam Machine suite, with multiple gaming PCs from different companies all running Linux. Of course, there were a lot of games that actually supported Linux, so in many cases these seemed like glorified streaming boxes for your main PC, and the venture ended in failure.
But when the company returned in 2022 with the Steam Deck, it did all the work to make it an attractive proposition for PC gamers. SteamOS now had a perfectly designed UI for its intended form factor, but more importantly, it could run most Windows games. This was because Valve was working on Proton, taking the work of the Wine project and building on it so that even if it wasn’t a game for Linux, it could run there, and sometimes run better than it did on Windows 11. And it’s still not perfect, but the Steam Deck has become and remains one of the most sought-after gaming handhelds.
Valve first released Proton in 2018, and at the time the company had little financial incentive to do so. After all, the original Steam Engine line had just been discontinued, and no one expected further efforts from the company anytime soon. But Valve played the long game and continued to invest in what it knew could be the key to the future of its business, even if it didn’t pay off immediately. And when Steam Deck launched four years later, it made all the difference.
Google needs this kind of long-term vision and investment, but it seems unlikely that it will happen. It’s about making huge short-term investments in AI and hoping that it eventually becomes a profitable venture, even if others show it’s a bad idea.
Artificial intelligence will kill the Google book
Ultimately, Google’s focus on integrating Magic Pointer and Gemini on the Googlebook platform may be its undoing. Microsoft and Apple’s efforts have shown that users do not care about these low-level efforts to integrate AI into their operating system, and where there is a good use for AI, they will always require third-party tools to be built. Google’s focus should be elsewhere.
