The First Chromebooks — A Laptop Built Around the Browser

A Chromebook is a laptop that runs Google's Chrome OS. The first ones were made by Samsung and Acer, announced at Google I/O on 11 May 2011, and went on sale online on 15 June 2011 in the US, UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. In the US they were sold through Amazon and Best Buy. Japan was not among the launch countries.

Six months earlier, on 7 December 2010, Google had started a pilot programme that handed out unbranded test notebooks, the machine later known as the Cr-48.

The dates

According to Wikipedia, launch prices ran from $349 to $499 depending on the model and whether it had 3G, and Acer's AC700 did not actually ship until early July.

The Cr-48 test notebook

In its December 2010 announcement Google wrote that Chrome OS was not done yet but had reached the stage where it needed feedback from real users. Some features required new hardware, and Google did not want to sell pre-beta computers, so it would give test notebooks to qualified users, developers, schools and businesses instead.

Setting up a new machine took less than a minute, Google wrote, and simply logging in brought back your apps, bookmarks and browser settings. It also said retail models would come from Acer and Samsung in the first half of 2011.

The browser as the operating system

Google's reasoning was that many people already spent all their time in a web browser, so an operating system that was essentially a browser could make computers faster, much simpler and fundamentally more secure. In May 2011 it described the Chromebook this way:

• No waiting minutes for the computer to boot and the browser to start; you would be reading email in seconds
• Automatic updates, so the software would get faster over time
• Apps, photos and documents available anywhere, with no need to worry about losing the computer or forgetting to back up
• A day of use on a single charge, with optional 3G
• Many layers of built-in security and no anti-virus software to buy

At the core sat the Chrome browser, which Google said had more than 160 million active users at the time. The announcement presented Chromebooks as bringing Chrome's speed, simplicity and security without the headaches of operating systems designed 20 to 30 years earlier. These were all Google's own claims.

Designed with schools in mind

From the first announcement Google aimed at schools and businesses as well as individuals. "Chromebooks for Business and Education" bundled the devices with a cloud console for remotely managing users, devices, applications and policies, plus enterprise-level support, warranties and replacements, and regular hardware refreshes. Monthly subscriptions started at $20 per user for schools and $28 for businesses.

The later spread is best shown with each figure's origin kept separate.

The Japanese figure counts devices delivered under the GIGA School programme. The US figure is market share and Google's figures are user counts, so the three measures cannot be compared with each other.

ChromeOS since

On 12 June 2024 Google announced that ChromeOS would be developed on large portions of the Android stack, taking in the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks as part of its foundation in order to deliver AI features faster. It said the changes would not be ready for consumers for quite some time. The Chromebook, which began as an operating system that was only a browser, was moving thirteen years later toward sharing its foundations with Android.

Where it sits

The first Chromebooks turned into a product the idea that a laptop's value lives on the web rather than in the machine, with management and updates handed to the cloud. Among the first customers Google pitched it to were schools, which manage many devices at once. For devices more broadly see the hardware timeline; for the company, Google.