Google announced the platform at The Android Show on YouTube, where it also detailed the new features coming in Android 17 and Gemini Intelligence (you can read more about that here). Google hasn’t intentionally shared the name of the OS yet (it’s internally called Aluminum OS); Googlebook is the platform, and Dell, Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo have all partnered to produce Google Books later this fall.
The company says it will share more information later this year, but I spoke with Alexander Kocher, a senior director at Google, a leader in Android tablets and laptops, to get more details. Kocher says there’s a tremendous amount of innovation in the Android ecosystem right now, and it translates well to laptops.
“You want to take advantage of the fact that this ecosystem is innovating so quickly that you can make sure laptops are on the crest of that wave of innovation – building on Android technologies makes that much easier for us,” he says.
Even now, when Google rolls out a new set of features for Android or its Gemini assistant, it often also announces some of those capabilities for other platforms, like Wear OS smartwatches, Android Auto, or Google Home. Chromebooks were rarely part of that picture because they were developed using a different technology stack and had their own development cycles. However, with Googlebooks, you can expect to see new features seen on Android available on a Googlebook laptop, where it makes sense.
Case in point: creating a widget. This is a new generative AI feature coming in Android 17, allowing users to create their own UI elements by speaking naturally with Gemini. You can ask it to create a widget that shows the daily exchange rate if you’re traveling, or a custom weather widget that also shows wind speed. This feature will also Available on Google Books.
But the most notable feature Google is teasing at the gate is the cursor, which the company calls the “magic cursor” on Google Book. Designed in collaboration with Google’s DeepMind team, it allows you to move your cursor while hovering over an app or image to get contextual suggestions. For example, you can hover your cursor on a date in an email, and Gemini will suggest setting up a calendar event. Or select two photos in the Files app, shake them, and Gemini will ask if you want to merge them.
Courtesy of Google
The Play Store is where you can access all your apps. But you may be wondering how Google gets around the classic Chromebook limitation: In ChromeOS, you can’t download desktop apps like Windows or macOS – you can only install Android apps from the Play Store or use web apps. This is a deal breaker for people who rely on certain apps that may not have a robust web client or Android app.
The answer is adaptive applications. Google has been encouraging app developers to make apps react to screen size for a few years now, and that now translates to encouraging app makers to create desktop versions of their Android apps for Googlebooks. But Kocher says things will be different from the “restricted” Android app experience on Chromebooks, which were originally designed for the web-first era.
