The Powerwash: A Fond Farewell to the Google Pixelbook

Google’s iconic laptop has been retired, leaving behind a legacy of innovation & inspiration

It is hard to consider any modern laptop as having a memorable or innovative design. After all, the general idea of the laptop has been around since the release of the Osborne 1 in 1981. I am currently typing this from an LG Gram, a laptop that I love but also one that simply looks like a laptop. A few years ago, Google released a laptop that was memorable and exciting that it called Pixelbook. A laptop that I owned and adored. Yet like many Google products, future versions of that product have now been killed off. Usually, when Google kills off a product I am not bothered by it, but this one is different. Google seemed to be taking laptop design in a new direction only to leave us with a one-hit wonder and a lot of what-ifs.

The Vision of a Product

When the Pixelbook was announced in 2017, the Chromebook landscape was a much different place than it is today. At that time Google’s laptop operating system was fledgling and was defined by extremely cheap hardware. These were strictly laptops for elementary school children and not…