Google cancels next Pixelbook and shuts down building team

Google cancels the next version of the Pixelbook laptop and dissolved the development team responsible.

According to sources, the device was far along in development and expected to debut next year, but the project was cut as part of recent cost-cutting measures inside Google. Members of the Pixelbook development team have been transferred elsewhere inside the company.

Only recently, Google was planning to keep the Pixelbook going. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has been saying for months that he intends to slow down hiring and cut some projects across the company. In a July 2022 memo, he wrote in some cases, that meant consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes. In other cases, that meant pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas. The Pixelbook and its team itself were casualties of that consolidation and redeployment.

Google’s hardware strategy with the Pixel devices has been to make good products and to try and show other manufacturers how to do the same.

The firm began investing in Pixel phones as a way to show off what its take on Android could look like. More recently, the firm is re-engaged in making smartwatches, with the Pixel Watch to come in a few weeks, and in building an Android tablet due to hit the markets in 2023.