Google Pixelbook Plans Dropped, Company Dissolves Team Building The Laptop

Google is dropping its plans to bring a new version of the Pixelbook laptop and the tech giant has also dissolved the team that was supposed to build the Pixelbook.

Google gave up on its Pixelbook laptop plans due to cost-cutting decisions.

Google is dropping its plans to bring a new version of the Pixelbook laptop and the tech giant has also dissolved the team that was supposed to build the Pixelbook, the media has reported. The under-development Pixelbook laptop was supposed to debut in 2023, but it would never see the light of the day in the wake of Google's recent cost-cutting decisions.

The tech giant had planned to keep the Google Pixelbook going and ahead of its annual I/O developer conference, the company was quoted as saying that it would continue with Pixelbook in the future. Google Hardware Chief Rick Osterloh was quoted as saying by The Verge: "What’s nice about the category is that it has matured. You can expect them to last a long time.”

However, it gave up on its Pixelbook laptop plans due to cost-cutting decisions. Earlier in June, Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees that the company plans to slow hiring for the rest of the year in the wake of a potential economic recession, Bloomberg had reported.

“Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” Pichai wrote. “In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes,” he said.

The tech giant paused hiring after the financial crisis more than a decade ago, but has since regularly added waves of new employees for its main advertising business as well as areas such as smartphones, self-driving cars and wearable devices that aren’t yet profitable. Google parent Alphabet, which employed almost 164,000 people as of March 31, has hired primarily in recent years for Google’s Cloud division and new fields like hardware.

Google has remained relatively immune to the economic dips of the technology sector historically.Meanwhile, the tech giant is expected to make announcements of new hardware on October 6 including the new Pixel 7 and 7 Pro smartphones, a much-awaited new Pixel Watch and a likely Nest Home hardware as well. The company is likely to unveil a foldable too next year.