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Google Reveals ‘First Laptops Built for Cloud Gaming’ Just After Killing Stadia

67 points by ortusdux 4y ago

tracker1 4y ago
Google has only shown time and again, that they cannot be trusted to maintain and support the platforms or tools they create. I just find that I would prefer to avoid them more often than not overall at this point. The things they do keep are monetized in such a way that it's become increasingly disturbing. Not that I'm an Apple advocate, but they're also going down this path now too. When Microsoft is the least evil of the three, I think the game is pretty much lost, or at least it feels that way.
- metadat 4y ago
  Yes, now I can't help but sit back and chuckle or even laugh out loud with each new Google headline. They are screwing themselves in the long-term, the Google brand is driven into the ground and quickly becoming trash because of their inability to see things through and commit to anything other than Google Ads. Remember Google+? "This is the future", they said. Now it's deleted. Over and over for so many new products. What a huge waste of time. As a consumer, Google has become an obviously poor investment of my time.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Worse is the dozens of communications platforms they've launched, renamed, launched competing platforms and abandoned them all... I've been a Voice user since it was Grand Cetral... TBH, the best time for Google comms was when Hangouts kind of took over text + gvoice and integrated contacts into a shared interface... then they broke it up, reduced features and shuttered it altogether. There have been like 3 since. And that's in a single related space. Not sure what I'll do if/when they shutter GVoice, probably try to cobble something similar for myself with Twilio, or at least that's my near term plan, only hoping one can create a dialer app for Android that does the same kinds of things.
    - sorokod 4y ago
      Well, Google Spaces are back from the dead, so there is hope...
      - metadat 4y ago
        Hope for what? :) Every new thing Big-G launches (or relaunches) is yet another statistically-likely-to-be cancelled thing in the future. I'd love to have more hope, but I'm observing the same mistakes playing out over and over. If this were a human relationship, I'd respectfully choose to go out separate ways. Unfortunately not a realistic option at this point, the Tech Titans have sunk their teeth into nearly everything on the net and acquired or suffocated the smalls.
        sorokod 4y ago
        Hope for resurrection offcourse!
  - addicted 4y ago
    Google+ was the turning point it seems. I guess once your company culture allows you to U-turn so hard on something you’ve been pushing so much, as Google was Google+, U-turning on anything else becomes super easy.
- abrookewood 4y ago
  They seriously feel like a train wreck at this point - company heading in diverging directions, trashed reputation, deprecated services. I really wish they'd get their shit together and provide a viable alternative to AWS and iOS.
- chrischen 4y ago
  Not sure if Google knows how products are made. They seem to approach everything with a “one-hit wonder” or nothing at all tactic. Contrast with Apple where they decide on the market and iterate until it succeeds. Apple TV was literally a useless box for the first 2-3 years.
  - helf 4y ago
    Google does not understand iteration. Like at all. It’s pathetic.
- THENATHE 4y ago
  If apple would just make iCloud not completely fucking garbage for windows OR support gaming on Mac (even just in the capacity of supporting Vulkan on metal) I would swap today. I’ve used iPhones and Android Phones for so long I can confidently say I have only three complaints: Lack of windows support OR gaming support on mac Apple Maps using yelp is fucking stupid Not letting all apps use safari extensions If they could fix those three things, I would literally instantly go out and spend 3000+ dollars on a new top spec MacBook Pro and IPad Pro.
- epakai 4y ago
  I think the Google Fi MVNO has been an exception. Pricing might not be as competitive as it used to be, but it doesn't feel questionably monetized. Just an OK plan for people that fit a small niche.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
“Well this is awkward” title Is it really that awkward though, like the end of Stadia wasn’t well predicted? It was a smart move to open Chromebook's support to cloud gaming competitors. Stadia's performance was so poor, had they still supported it, it's hard to tell if it would discourage competitors from releasing on their hardware as well, my guess is it wouldn't.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  Did you ever try Stadia on hardware similar to these laptops? I did, and to be honest I thought performance was excellent. On my Pixel Slate, my 2015 XPS13, and my M2 MacBook Air - all gave great performance with no observable lag or bandwidth issues, even when playing on WiFi and streaming Netflix at the same time over a 76Mb/s connection. The only time the experience degraded was, oddly, when using the Stadia-bundled Chromecast, which even had a wired connection. Sadly, like basically everyone else, I never trusted Google enough to buy into the ecosystem - and consequently bought a grand total of 1 game.
  - finiteseries 4y ago
    It was okay, but solidly last gen. Stadia was always limited to 1080p@60hz, upscaling to 4K at max bitrate of ~45Mbps. Getting the new MBP actually pushed me to GeForce Now at the time which can hit true 4k@120hz and stream at native Mac resolutions with eg ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 now up to 70Mbps, I highly recommend trying it out if you’re still interested in cloud gaming, the difference is quite drastic.
  - pipeline_peak 4y ago
    Everything good Google brought to Stadia always came from their strength as an Internet giant. Like Xbox in 2001, superior performance and backing of a large non gaming company didn’t compensate lack of content. That’s the strongest thing a platform can have.
_fat_santa 4y ago
Hey Google, Good luck getting major customers onboard with GCP, no seriously. AWS right now is a clear choice over GCP in terms of company reputation alone. If you go to build a platform on AWS, you can be sure that the product will still exist in a decade (barring some world catastrophe), and that can't be said for GCP. I get that those are entirely different divisions but overall company reputation matters a ton.
- primax 4y ago
  Ultimately they killed all of GCP when they kept depreciating products and features. This is despite clients telling them it's a huge block to them investing in using the platform. Idiots.
  - 1letterunixname 4y ago
    And summarily laying-off senior GCP support engineers to save a buck. GCP is what would happen if npm js developers assembled an *aaS stack. I work at MegaCorp™ and we wouldn't touch GCP with a grounded fiberglass pole.
jamesy0ung 4y ago
What’s the point in spending money on a high end chrome book when you can get a similar laptop for a similar price?
- refulgentis 4y ago
  OS is much better than Windows and, frankly, macOS at this point. Sort of same analogue as what moving from late XP to Mac OS 10.3 felt like in 2006. Can you get 120 hz this cheap in Windows laptop?
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    > OS is much better than Windows and, frankly, macOS at this point. ... for a discrete set of tasks, maybe. As a general purpose OS, not a prayer. I know Chrome is trying to become its own OS, and seems to be making pretty good headway, but don't cheat yourself thinking "and I'll just ..." unless that task runs in Chrome. I'm aware of the Linux containers on approved devices but just like WSL2 has some grave impedance mismatch with its Windows parent, so too does Linux with its ChromeOS parent
    - refulgentis 4y ago
      It's been fine for me and available on every device I've seen the last 3 years, and sometimes wonder what the actual tangible difference to a user is between it and OS X's Unix underpinnings, other than OS X needing a incessant parade of permission dialogs due to it. But I bet it's not great if you tried doing ex. like media production?
  - helf 4y ago
    Hahaha what? Really? ChromeOS is a clusterfuck and to get even remotely useful beyond awful web app functionality requires running proper Linux desktop apps or Android apps. Which negates the entire point of the OS and you might as well just run a regular desktop Linux where you don’t have to jump through hoops to do things and don’t have Google crammed up your ass.
- finiteseries 4y ago
Apocryphon 4y ago
The Stadia fiasco aside, how do the specs look on these machines?
- helf 4y ago
  Pretty OK. But, like, wtf is the point? You’ll be buying a slightly cheaper than a regular laptop laptop with a shitty OS on hardware that will /literally/ have support expiration date assigned to it. There’s no compelling reason to buy something like this. Unless you are a really basic user who hops on band wagons or is a massive google fanboy for some unfathomable reason.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I've been looking to buy a cheap gaming machine, and I've used GeForce Now in the past and quite like it. Though admittedly, I was also looking at Mini PCs and the Steam Deck, so I might be focusing on the wrong targets.
Mikeb85 4y ago
Good looking device. If you can install a full Linux on it I might get one. And if not, maybe this'll come along soon: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/steam-on-chromeos/ https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/steam-on-chromeos/
hedora 4y ago
I am increasingly unable to distinguish The Onion headlines from the actual news.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Google is an org where the left hand has no idea what the right is doing. The people working on this laptop probably fully expected it to be for stadia and didn’t want to chuck it all in the bin right at the end.
- donny2018 4y ago
  This would be perfect as a Silicon Valley episode.
mgh2 4y ago
This is clearly a product manager testing the market once they spotted a growing target demographic which all tech companies are chasing after, except Apple due to lack of technical maturation: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/18/apple-considered-launching-cloud-gaming-service/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/18/apple-considered-launch...
Ancalagon 4y ago
What an embarrassment
Ekaros 4y ago
85 ms input latency? Isn't that quite horrid?

67 points by ortusdux 4y ago

Google has only shown time and again, that they cannot be trusted to maintain and support the platforms or tools they create. I just find that I would prefer to avoid them more often than not overall at this point. The things they do keep are monetized in such a way that it's become increasingly disturbing. Not that I'm an Apple advocate, but they're also going down this path now too. When Microsoft is the least evil of the three, I think the game is pretty much lost, or at least it feels that way.

metadat 4y ago
Yes, now I can't help but sit back and chuckle or even laugh out loud with each new Google headline. They are screwing themselves in the long-term, the Google brand is driven into the ground and quickly becoming trash because of their inability to see things through and commit to anything other than Google Ads. Remember Google+? "This is the future", they said. Now it's deleted. Over and over for so many new products. What a huge waste of time. As a consumer, Google has become an obviously poor investment of my time.
- tracker1 4y ago
  Worse is the dozens of communications platforms they've launched, renamed, launched competing platforms and abandoned them all... I've been a Voice user since it was Grand Cetral... TBH, the best time for Google comms was when Hangouts kind of took over text + gvoice and integrated contacts into a shared interface... then they broke it up, reduced features and shuttered it altogether. There have been like 3 since. And that's in a single related space. Not sure what I'll do if/when they shutter GVoice, probably try to cobble something similar for myself with Twilio, or at least that's my near term plan, only hoping one can create a dialer app for Android that does the same kinds of things.
  - sorokod 4y ago
    Well, Google Spaces are back from the dead, so there is hope...
    - metadat 4y ago
      Hope for what? :) Every new thing Big-G launches (or relaunches) is yet another statistically-likely-to-be cancelled thing in the future. I'd love to have more hope, but I'm observing the same mistakes playing out over and over. If this were a human relationship, I'd respectfully choose to go out separate ways. Unfortunately not a realistic option at this point, the Tech Titans have sunk their teeth into nearly everything on the net and acquired or suffocated the smalls.
      - sorokod 4y ago
        Hope for resurrection offcourse!
- addicted 4y ago
  Google+ was the turning point it seems. I guess once your company culture allows you to U-turn so hard on something you’ve been pushing so much, as Google was Google+, U-turning on anything else becomes super easy.
abrookewood 4y ago
They seriously feel like a train wreck at this point - company heading in diverging directions, trashed reputation, deprecated services. I really wish they'd get their shit together and provide a viable alternative to AWS and iOS.
chrischen 4y ago
Not sure if Google knows how products are made. They seem to approach everything with a “one-hit wonder” or nothing at all tactic. Contrast with Apple where they decide on the market and iterate until it succeeds. Apple TV was literally a useless box for the first 2-3 years.
- helf 4y ago
  Google does not understand iteration. Like at all. It’s pathetic.
THENATHE 4y ago
If apple would just make iCloud not completely fucking garbage for windows OR support gaming on Mac (even just in the capacity of supporting Vulkan on metal) I would swap today. I’ve used iPhones and Android Phones for so long I can confidently say I have only three complaints: Lack of windows support OR gaming support on mac Apple Maps using yelp is fucking stupid Not letting all apps use safari extensions If they could fix those three things, I would literally instantly go out and spend 3000+ dollars on a new top spec MacBook Pro and IPad Pro.
epakai 4y ago
I think the Google Fi MVNO has been an exception. Pricing might not be as competitive as it used to be, but it doesn't feel questionably monetized. Just an OK plan for people that fit a small niche.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

“Well this is awkward” title Is it really that awkward though, like the end of Stadia wasn’t well predicted? It was a smart move to open Chromebook's support to cloud gaming competitors. Stadia's performance was so poor, had they still supported it, it's hard to tell if it would discourage competitors from releasing on their hardware as well, my guess is it wouldn't.

Moissanite 4y ago
Did you ever try Stadia on hardware similar to these laptops? I did, and to be honest I thought performance was excellent. On my Pixel Slate, my 2015 XPS13, and my M2 MacBook Air - all gave great performance with no observable lag or bandwidth issues, even when playing on WiFi and streaming Netflix at the same time over a 76Mb/s connection. The only time the experience degraded was, oddly, when using the Stadia-bundled Chromecast, which even had a wired connection. Sadly, like basically everyone else, I never trusted Google enough to buy into the ecosystem - and consequently bought a grand total of 1 game.
- finiteseries 4y ago
  It was okay, but solidly last gen. Stadia was always limited to 1080p@60hz, upscaling to 4K at max bitrate of ~45Mbps. Getting the new MBP actually pushed me to GeForce Now at the time which can hit true 4k@120hz and stream at native Mac resolutions with eg ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077 now up to 70Mbps, I highly recommend trying it out if you’re still interested in cloud gaming, the difference is quite drastic.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  Everything good Google brought to Stadia always came from their strength as an Internet giant. Like Xbox in 2001, superior performance and backing of a large non gaming company didn’t compensate lack of content. That’s the strongest thing a platform can have.

_fat_santa 4y ago

Hey Google, Good luck getting major customers onboard with GCP, no seriously. AWS right now is a clear choice over GCP in terms of company reputation alone. If you go to build a platform on AWS, you can be sure that the product will still exist in a decade (barring some world catastrophe), and that can't be said for GCP. I get that those are entirely different divisions but overall company reputation matters a ton.

primax 4y ago
Ultimately they killed all of GCP when they kept depreciating products and features. This is despite clients telling them it's a huge block to them investing in using the platform. Idiots.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  And summarily laying-off senior GCP support engineers to save a buck. GCP is what would happen if npm js developers assembled an *aaS stack. I work at MegaCorp™ and we wouldn't touch GCP with a grounded fiberglass pole.

jamesy0ung 4y ago

What’s the point in spending money on a high end chrome book when you can get a similar laptop for a similar price?

refulgentis 4y ago
OS is much better than Windows and, frankly, macOS at this point. Sort of same analogue as what moving from late XP to Mac OS 10.3 felt like in 2006. Can you get 120 hz this cheap in Windows laptop?
- mdaniel 4y ago
  > OS is much better than Windows and, frankly, macOS at this point. ... for a discrete set of tasks, maybe. As a general purpose OS, not a prayer. I know Chrome is trying to become its own OS, and seems to be making pretty good headway, but don't cheat yourself thinking "and I'll just ..." unless that task runs in Chrome. I'm aware of the Linux containers on approved devices but just like WSL2 has some grave impedance mismatch with its Windows parent, so too does Linux with its ChromeOS parent
  - refulgentis 4y ago
    It's been fine for me and available on every device I've seen the last 3 years, and sometimes wonder what the actual tangible difference to a user is between it and OS X's Unix underpinnings, other than OS X needing a incessant parade of permission dialogs due to it. But I bet it's not great if you tried doing ex. like media production?
- helf 4y ago
  Hahaha what? Really? ChromeOS is a clusterfuck and to get even remotely useful beyond awful web app functionality requires running proper Linux desktop apps or Android apps. Which negates the entire point of the OS and you might as well just run a regular desktop Linux where you don’t have to jump through hoops to do things and don’t have Google crammed up your ass.
finiteseries 4y ago

Apocryphon 4y ago

The Stadia fiasco aside, how do the specs look on these machines?

helf 4y ago
Pretty OK. But, like, wtf is the point? You’ll be buying a slightly cheaper than a regular laptop laptop with a shitty OS on hardware that will /literally/ have support expiration date assigned to it. There’s no compelling reason to buy something like this. Unless you are a really basic user who hops on band wagons or is a massive google fanboy for some unfathomable reason.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I've been looking to buy a cheap gaming machine, and I've used GeForce Now in the past and quite like it. Though admittedly, I was also looking at Mini PCs and the Steam Deck, so I might be focusing on the wrong targets.

Mikeb85 4y ago

Good looking device. If you can install a full Linux on it I might get one. And if not, maybe this'll come along soon: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/steam-on-chromeos/ https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/steam-on-chromeos/

hedora 4y ago

I am increasingly unable to distinguish The Onion headlines from the actual news.

Gigachad 4y ago
Google is an org where the left hand has no idea what the right is doing. The people working on this laptop probably fully expected it to be for stadia and didn’t want to chuck it all in the bin right at the end.
donny2018 4y ago
This would be perfect as a Silicon Valley episode.

mgh2 4y ago

This is clearly a product manager testing the market once they spotted a growing target demographic which all tech companies are chasing after, except Apple due to lack of technical maturation: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/18/apple-considered-launching-cloud-gaming-service/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/10/18/apple-considered-launch...

Ancalagon 4y ago

What an embarrassment

Ekaros 4y ago

85 ms input latency? Isn't that quite horrid?