Google will start taking Googlebook pre-orders on Monday 21st September 2026. It confirmed the date in a short video posted to the Android YouTube channel on 14th September, titled “Googlebook Pre-Order Coming Soon”. The same date now sits on the front of googlebook.google. The email Google sent to people on its notify list puts the exact moment at 9am Eastern time, which is 4pm in Nairobi.
A Googlebook is a laptop that runs Android instead of ChromeOS. Google announced the category in May at The Android Show, and we wrote about it here. It is the shipping end of a merger Google confirmed in July 2025, when Android ecosystem president Sameer Samat said the company was combining ChromeOS and Android into a single platform. Chromebooks are not being killed off. Google’s own FAQ says they carry on running ChromeOS for simplicity and speed, while Googlebooks sit above them as a flagship tier with better materials, faster chips and Gemini built in. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo are making the first lineup of Googlebooks.
What the teaser shows
We see very little, on purpose. It is a vertical clip that opens on black. A thin line of colour, blue running through green and yellow into orange, lights up along the front edge of a dark, closed laptop, under the words “Something new is on the horizon”. Then an end card: “Googlebook. Pre-Order 9.21.26.” No lid opening, no screen, nothing of the hardware beyond a silhouette.
That line is the hardware signature. Every Googlebook gets a light bar on the body, and the idea is the one Apple had with the glowing logo on old MacBooks: you should recognise the machine across a room.
Magic Pointer is the Gemini feature
Magic Pointer turns the mouse cursor into a way to ask Gemini about whatever is on the screen, without opening a chatbot in another window. Google explains it in one sentence: “Select anything to ask, compare, or create with Gemini, instantly.”
You select something and get actions that suit what you selected. Highlight a date in an email and it offers to make a calendar entry. Select two images and it will show them together. Select a photo of a plant and the options are Search with Lens, generate an image, or buy it. The app is already on the Play Store, published on 9 June 2026 as com.google.android.desktop.gpointer.app, and it will not install on anything that is not a Googlebook. Its listing explains it this way: “Select anything on your screen to get contextual AI suggestions and seamlessly get help from Gemini.”
Shipping it as an ordinary Play Store app means Google can update Magic Pointer on its own schedule instead of waiting for a full system release. For a buyer, that means the feature can get better without the laptop needing a new version of Android first.
There are three other things:
- Create My Widget builds a widget when you describe one in plain English.
- Cast My Apps runs your phone’s apps on the laptop with nothing installed.
- Quick Access puts your phone’s files in the laptop’s file manager as if they lived there.
The small print on Google’s page says the last two need a phone on Android 17 or newer. Android 17 only reached Pixels in June and most other brands are still rolling it out, so the phone-to-laptop half of the pitch is out of reach for a while yet. Gemini Intelligence, the umbrella Google files Magic Pointer under, has its own hardware bar, and we went through that in May.
Looking forward to this in Kenya? Well, you’ll have to wait, and import. Googlebook.google is localised for the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany and France.
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