A date, at last
Google has set 21 September as the day preorders open for Googlebook, the laptop category it announced in May. The confirmation came through a video on the Android YouTube channel and an update to Google’s own product page, which now carries the date and little else.
Five manufacturers are named for the first wave: Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo. Google describes the machines as “a brand-new category of flagship laptops bringing together the best of ChromeOS and Android”, distinguished from Chromebooks by “high quality materials, powerful performance, intelligence features”. Techish reported that preorders open at 9am Eastern, and that the initial software is localised for the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany and France.
What Google is not saying
The missing number is the price. Google’s page lists no figure for any configuration from any of the five manufacturers, five days before preorders are due to open. For a product Google is positioning as flagship rather than budget, that is the single detail buyers need, and it is the one that has not been published.
The specifications are similarly thin. Google names features rather than hardware, and the feature list is where the AI case sits.
The Gemini features
Four are highlighted on Google’s page. Magic Pointer lets a user “Select anything to ask, compare, or create with Gemini, instantly” — an on-screen selection that hands whatever is under it to the model. Create My Widget builds a custom widget from a plain-language description. Cast My Apps runs phone applications on the laptop with nothing installed, and Quick Access exposes phone files in the laptop’s file manager as though they were local.
The last two require Android 17 or newer on the phone, which narrows the audience for the part of the pitch that depends on a phone being in the room.
Where this comes from
Googlebook is the visible end of a merger Google confirmed in July 2025, folding ChromeOS and Android into a single platform. The machines run Android rather than ChromeOS, which makes this the first consumer hardware category to ship on the combined platform, and the first test of whether Google can sell a premium laptop on the strength of an assistant.
What to watch
Prices, on 21 September. A flagship position and a Chromebook lineage point in opposite directions, and the opening figure will say which one Google means. Also worth watching: whether Cast My Apps and Quick Access appear in the reviews at all, given they need a recent Android phone to do anything.
