Google announced Googlebooks, a new line of Android-powered laptops built with Gemini Intelligence, on The Android Show on YouTube. The devices will begin shipping later this year from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, and will be offered in a range of prices and hardware configurations.

Googlebooks run Android natively, include the Play Store, and support desktop-grade Android apps with hardware and OS-level access. The platform will not replace Chromebooks, which Google launched in 2011 and which have been adopted primarily in enterprise and education sectors. Chromebooks will continue to be available, according to Google.

A central feature is the Magic Pointer, an AI-powered cursor built with Google's DeepMind team. Wiggling the cursor back and forth activates a full-screen Gemini experience that can analyze on-screen content, make contextual suggestions, and pull data from multiple apps. Demonstrations showed the Magic Pointer selecting multiple images and combining them with Nano Banana, and suggesting a calendar appointment when pointed at a date in an email, according to Google.

Magic Cue, available on Pixel phones since last year, will also come to Googlebooks and can recommend actions and surface information based on context such as messages and emails. The laptops will support AI-generated widgets from Android phones, gathering data from the web and from Google apps to populate a personalized home screen dashboard, with the format adapted for the laptop form factor. Android 17 will include a Create a Widget feature that uses generative AI and natural language with Gemini to produce widgets such as a daily exchange rate display or a custom weather widget with wind speed, and that feature will be available on Googlebooks.

The laptops integrate with Android phones to stream apps to the larger screen. A dedicated taskbar button lists all apps on the connected phone, and clicking one opens it in a floating window on the Googlebook. Files can be transferred from a connected phone to the laptop when needed. Googlebooks can be identified by the Glowbar on the lid, an illuminated design feature.

"You want to take advantage of the fact that this ecosystem is innovating so fast that you make sure that laptops are at the tip of that innovation wave—building on top of Android technologies makes that so much easier for us," said Alexander Kuscher, senior director at Google leading Android tablets and laptops. Google said it will share more information about its app ecosystem partners closer to the launch.

The company has not specified where Googlebooks will fall within Android's openness spectrum regarding third-party app stores and sideloaded application packages, and has not discussed plans to manufacture its own Googlebook hardware.