Hello! Well, it finally happened. My book is out in the world. Yesterday was a magical blur of book signings and media appearances for I AM NOT A ROBOT. Hopefully your copies have started making their way to you. And if you’re waiting on a bookplate, I owe you one. More on that below.
But you’re here for real tech news, and we’ve got real tech news. I sat down with Google’s head of Android to talk about its new Googlebook laptops. Plus: Venmo finally improves its privacy defaults, iOS and Android get better texting encryption, Sam Altman takes the stand and a very useful tip to shut up Alexa+.
On Tuesday, Google announced Googlebooks.
If you’re thinking, “Wait, isn’t Google Books already a website where you get books from Google?” Yes. Correct. But if you’re also thinking,” That sounds like a poorly named new kind of laptop,” also yes.
The Googlebook, according to Google, is the laptop for the AI age. To be clear, Chromebooks are not going away; those were the laptops built for the cloud era. Now Google is merging ChromeOS and Android in a new way for, yes, Googlebooks.
Built around Gemini, Google’s core AI model, the devices weave AI throughout the operating system. There’s a new AI-powered “magic cursor,” which lets you summon Gemini over whatever you’re hovering on—to generate images, compare photos, ask questions and more. You can also pull up Android phone apps right on the laptop. And, similar to Chromebooks, Google won’t be the only company making them. Dell, Acer and others will start selling Googlebooks this fall.
On top of that, Google announced better integrations with Apple. I caught up with Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem at Google, to ask what it all means.
This newsletter was written and curated by Joanna Stern and Adele Lowitz. Hopefully you enjoyed it more than the internet enjoyed the name “Googlebooks.” See you Friday!
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