By Paul Thurrott
Publication Date: 2026-10-11 13:39:00
Google should be ashamed of the shoddy, half-assed state of Googlebook OS at its launch, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Reviewers everywhere who either got a device from Google or a hardware maker or just ran out and paid for one themselves have all reported on missing features, functional regressions compared to Chrome OS, and other problems.
For bloggers, YouTubers, and others in the Google camp, this is a gut-check moment and not everyone is rising to the challenge. For me, this is just a massive disappointment. Chrome OS and the Chromebooks that run it were always a great idea, and they’ve improved dramatically over the years. And while Googlebook does move the needle on this platform as I had speculated, I am still troubled that it did so in the wrong direction. Googlebook is a step backward.
The good news is that this is just a software problem, and that means it can be fixed. The bad news it that this is Google we’re talking about, and its…
