The topic Magic Pointer won’t save the Googlebook because Google still doesn’t… is currently the subject of lively discussion — readers and analysts are keeping a close eye on developments.
This is taking place in a dynamic environment: companies’ decisions and competitors’ reactions can quickly change the picture.
Google recently made waves with its announcement of the Googlebook platform. Bringing together elements of Chrome OS and Android, along with a lot of AI features, it’s the company’s latest attempt at winning over laptop users, after Chromebooks mostly gained traction in the entry-level education market.
Those AI features, all aggregated under the fancy new “Magic Pointer” seem to be the main selling point Google wants you to pay attention, but this is, in my opinion, a misguided effort. It’s especially unfortunate because Google has done some things right with its existing platform, Chrome OS, but rather than address its biggest problems, the company is investing in a feature that’s not clearly desired by anyone.
The point of this article isn’t to discuss the merits of generative AI as a whole. There are plenty of different tools out there that vary in usefulness, but let’s set that aside. The real problem with Magic Pointer is that this simply isn’t the kind of AI feature people want, and certainly not the kind of tool that sells people on laptops.
Whenever you read about AI tools and capabilities, even right here on XDA, when is it that the built-in features in an operating system are what’s interesting? How many articles even cover those features beyond the initial announcement or launch? 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 tools with your notes to create study material, or use Claude to help you identify songs and easily find them on Spotify, and so much more. But none of that has to do with features that are built into any operating system.
It’s not for the lack of trying; Microsoft has been pushing Copilot on Windows 11 for years, and since 2024, the company even introduced Copilot+, using on-device AI to provide features that integrate with various aspects of Windows. In fact, a major one of these features was Click To Do, a capability that’s been available for over a year at this point, and that’s remarkably similar to Magic Pointer. You hold down the Windows key, and you can right-click anything to have your computer analyze the screen and give you options for what to do with the things you’re looking at. With Magic Pointer, you shake your cursor instead, but it’s almost exactly the same idea.
When was the last time you’ve seen anyone care about Copilot+ laptops? Has that capability, or others like Recall, even factored into a laptop-buying decision? Even Dell, maker of said laptops, admitted earlier this year that consumers simply aren’t buying laptops for these features.
You might consider that to be another classic Microsoft blunder, but really, things aren’t much better in Apple’s camp. The company has talked up Apple Intelligence here and there at WWDC and other events, but beyond those dedicated sections in their respective presentations, you likely haven’t heard about anyone actively using any of these features. Frankly, it’s almost befuddling that Google would choose to make this a major focus for a new laptop platform in 2026.
If Google wants to make its PC platform more viable, the company needs to understand that the biggest factor for users holding out is the apps. Chrome OS has always been based on glorified web apps, and it’s true that you can do a lot with just the browser. These days, the majority of PC users spend most of their time in the browser. Until they don’t, and that’s where the problems start.
Over the years, Google has made things somewhat better. Support for Android apps added a lot more capabilities to Chromebooks, and the Linux subsystem for developers does enable users to install and run Linux apps, though it requires some work that the majority of people is not willing to go through.
But without these apps, Chromebooks and the Googlebook will remain limited to the same things you can do on your phone, and that’s a big problem. There are very powerful apps on Android for a lot of things, but Photoshop and Lightroom for Android are not the PC versions. They don’t have the same capabilities or the familiarity of having the tools you’ve always used. If you’re interested in live streaming on YouTube, there’s no OBS for Chromebooks, there’s no DaVinci Resolve or Adobe Premiere Pro for editing videos. There are tools that are alternatives to those, but they’re not the tools people know or want.
To make the Googlebook a viable laptop, it needs to run PC apps, and that means embracing Linux. Running Linux apps on Chrome OS (or Aluminum OS) should have been a no-brainer, and it shouldn’t be a “developer” setting or anything of the kind. This is the way to get desktop apps on these devices, and Google needs to make it as seamless as possible. In fact, Google should also contribute to Wine or take lessons from it to make Windows apps even more usable on the Googlebook.
Not only that, but Google has a virtually infinite amount of resources to invest in this if it wanted to. Creating a more seamless experience with an app store, and even helping companies bring apps over to Linux, should be the most obvious move. If anyone could push companies like Adobe, Canva, and others to make tools for their platform, it’s Google. It probably still wouldn’t do everything a Windows PC can, but it would be far closer to the workflow PC users are accustomed to.
To put it in broader terms, the problem that Google’s PC efforts have had so far is that they expect customers to be drawn to the differences in Chrome OS. The lightweight approach for affordable devices certainly has its appeal, but it also clearly hasn’t worked when it comes to make for truly desirable laptops. For that to happen, the company has to meet customers where they are, and PC users want PC features.
That’s a lesson that can easily be learned from Valve. Back in 2015, Valve introduced the Steam Machine lineup with multiple gaming PCs from different companies, all of which were running Linux. Of course, the number of games that actually supported Linux was abysmal, so in many cases, these were seen as glorified streaming boxes for your main PC, and that initiative failed miserably.
But when the company came back with the Steam Deck in 2022, it put in all the work to make it an attractive offering for PC gamers. SteamOS now had a UI designed perfectly for the intended form factor, but more importantly, it could run the majority of Windows games. That was because Valve spent years working on Proton, taking the work of the Wine project and building on top of it to ensure that even if a game isn’t made for Linux, it can work there, and sometimes even better than it does on Windows 11. And it’s not perfect yet, but the Steam Deck has become and remained one of the most sought-after gaming handhelds.
Valve first released Proton back in 2018, and at the time, the company had very little financial incentive to do it. The original Steam Machine lineup had just been discontinued, after all, and no one expected further efforts from the company anytime soon. But Valve played the long game, and it continued to invest in what it knew could be the key to the future of its business, even if it didn’t pay off right away. And when the Steam Deck launched four years later, that made all the difference.
Google needs that kind of long-term vision and investment, but it seems highly unlikely that this is going to happen. It’s all about massive short-term investments in AI and hoping that it will eventually start being a profitable venture, even when others have shown it’s a bad idea.
Ultimately, Google’s focus on Magic Pointer and Gemini integration on the Googlebook platform is more than likely to be its undoing. Microsoft and Apple’s efforts have shown that users don’t care about these low-tier efforts to integrate AI into an operating system, and wherever there are good uses for AI, they’re always going to require third-party tools to set up. Google’s focus should be elsewhere.