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Will Googlebooks work in business?
Google has just unveiled the Googlebook, what might be regarded as the next generation of Chromebooks. Slick, more powerful and better capable of running desktop apps than Chromebooks, IT managers might be pondering whether Googlebooks will have a place in businesses as well as the home.
Here we’re going to explore where Chromebooks did and didn’t succeed in businesses, and whether the more sophisticated Googlebooks have a better chance of cracking the corporate market.
The Chromebook legacy
Chromebooks have been around for a long time now, 15 years in fact. Yet, in the global scheme of things, Chromebooks are still far from a mainstream choice. According to StatCounter, ChromeOS commands only 1.5% of the desktop operating system market, less than a fifth of the share of other flavours of Linux. (ChromeOS is itself Linux-based, of course.)
That’s not to say Chromebooks haven’t found success in certain sectors. Education has long been a key market for Chromebooks, with schools in particular attracted by the relatively cheap hardware and easy-to-manage nature of Chromebooks.
Omdia figures put Chromebook shipments at around 5m per quarter, with education accounting for a major part of that. At one point it was estimated that 60% of all computers bought in US schools were Chromebooks, and other markets such as Japan and the UK also have high Chromebook penetration in education.
Outside of education, the picture is patchy. Google’s own ChromeOS customer stories boast of deployments in airline customer contact centres, banks, the Royal Air Force and more. But they tend to be limited deployments in niche areas (the RAF deployment was to give cadets a computer for training, for example) rather than enterprise-wide. Retail and kiosk use also pops up frequently in case studies.
A Google-commissioned report from Forrester published last year hailed the economic benefits of deploying ChromeOS in enterprises, but that report also contained an indicator of why corporate deployments haven’t been greater. An IT director of a telecoms firm told Forrester that his business had “a ton of legacy applications”.
“There are still some applications people need to use for some day-to-day functions that are blocking our ability to unlock this Chromebook ecosystem for them.”
Will Googlebooks make a difference?
The basis of the Googlebooks is a new operating system, called Googlebook OS. This is a hybrid of ChromeOS and Android, but with a couple of particular benefits for business users.
The first of those benefits is security. Not only is ChromeOS less of a target for malware writers, because it simply doesn’t have the footprint of Windows or macOS, but its limited ability to install executables makes it harder to infiltrate. Googlebook OS will be even less of a target and retains the same security architecture as ChromeOS.
Another big benefit is improved app performance. ChromeOS has supported Android apps for several years, but does so in an emulated container. That slows apps down and the hardware was often limited in the first place. Not a great combo.
Android apps run natively on Googlebooks and do so with proper desktop windowing, alongside the full Chrome browser with extensions.
Performance should be further improved by the enhanced Googlebook spec. Many Chromebooks are low-end devices with limited processors and RAM. The Googlebooks announced so far have a minimum of 16GB RAM and either powerful Snapdragon X Elite or Intel Core Ultra 5/7 processors, plus high-resolution OLED screens. In other words, these are premium devices, not the generally limited hardware that Chromebooks are famed/notorious for.
Googlebooks in business: what about legacy apps?
Those legacy apps could soon be less of an issue, too. Google recently acquired Cameyo, a solution that turns legacy Windows and Linux desktop applications into web apps accessible from any browser. The improved hardware spec should help run virtualised apps more smoothly.
The premium hardware has its downsides for business buyers too, of course. Many will have been attracted by the low cost of ChromeOS hardware, but the cheapest Googlebook announced so far costs $899. It’s therefore much more expensive to roll out a fleet of Googlebooks. With the ongoing component crisis showing no sign of lifting, hardware is only likely to become more expensive, too.
There’s another reason why businesses won’t want to rush into Googlebook deployments: enterprise management of those devices isn’t ready. In a blog post published last week, Google said enterprise tools for the Googlebooks won’t be coming until the back half of 2027. In the meantime, IT departments can’t properly fleet manage any Googlebook devices.
For now, we expect limited pilot deployments at best.
Is this the end of Chromebooks?
All of this might leave businesses with Chromebook deployments wondering what’s to become of their devices? Google insists that Chromebooks and ChromeOS aren’t going away, and that the two operating systems will co-exist. For the time being at least.
In recent years, Google has made a big play of long-term support for Chromebooks, with devices being promised up to ten years of security updates. Google has pledged to honour that commitment.
In the long term, does Google really want to continue supporting two reasonably similar operating systems? It seems unlikely. But how Google manages the transition from Chromebook to Googlebook will be fascinating to watch.
More articles by Barry Collins
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