Google is providing important information to app developers this week during its Google I/O conference, ensuring they are prepared for the launch of Googlebook.
We learned a bit about Googlebook earlier this month, and honestly, we expected to learn more about it yesterday during the company’s keynote. They didn’t mention it at all, focusing more on AI and Gemini products. Regardless, we have more information thanks to a dedicated landing page for the product, catered for app developers.
The page says, “Googlebook provides a high-performance, large-screen canvas for your apps, allowing users to transition seamlessly from quick mobile interactions to deep, focused sessions on a laptop.”
- Design for Desktops: Leverage a larger display to maximize productivity with higher information density.
- Comprehensive Input Support: Optimize for precision and versatility by supporting keyboard, mouse, trackpad, stylus, and game controller interactions.
- Contextual Cursors: Enhance usability by implementing custom cursors that provide visual feedback and text entry, resizing, and specialized tool interactions.
- File and Print Management: Support file-level interactions and printing, ensuring your app handles document management and export tasks natively.
What we take away is this: Googlebook is very much a laptop experience, not just an Android-powered tablet with a keyboard. However, it’ll be important for apps to support a user switching between both devices, the Googlebook and an Android phone, as well as for Android apps to run beautifully on the Googlebook.
Google wants the highest quality apps to support drag and drop, multi-instance for seamless multitasking, as well as widgets on the desktop experience.
We still don’t have a launch date or an idea on pricing from Google, but it seems possible that we could see launch later this year. Google is already teasing the hardware, so something is coming eventually.
Are you ready for Googlebook?
