Google’s cost cuts are killing the Pixelbook division

Google’s hardware division still fails to provide a consistent and reliable choice of hardware. The Verge report states that Google “cancelled the next iteration of its Pixelbook laptop and disbanded the team responsible for its creation.”It’s been that way for a few years now, but the only new Chromebooks will come from third-party manufacturers.

The reason for disbanding the Pixelbook team appears to be spending cuts by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In August, Google’s CEO said that “performance is generally not up to par for the headcount we have”and warned that the company will “consolidate where investments overlap and streamline processes.”The Verge report states, “The Pixelbook team and Pixelbook itself have been victims of this consolidation and relocation.”

Taking Google Hardware seriously as a real business has always been difficult. Google treats the hardware market as a small hobby and only sells devices in a small number of countries. Google Hardware’s product lines can hardly be called “lines”of products, with inconsistent releases and no recurring yearly improvements that seem to make other hardware work. Without the Pixelbook’s automatic annual release, Google’s timing with this relaunch would have been terrible. The last time a Chromebook was released was a year before the pandemic, and when the pandemic hit and Chromebook sales reached an all-time high, Google had nothing to offer. Google’s Pixelbook was supposed to arrive just before Chromebook sales crashed back to Earth.

The instability of Google hardware means that a dead product is never truly dead. Google stopped making tablets in 2015, returned to Chrome OS tablets in 2018, then left for another three years, and now it plans to release a new Android tablet in 2023. Sure, someday we’ll get another Google laptop, but we’ll just have to wait a few more years.