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Google Reportedly Moving Engineers Off Laptop and Tablet Projects

By Laura Tucker
Google Reportedly Moving Engineers Off Laptop and Tablet Projects Featured Image

We hear a lot about what the future will hold for hardware with regards to desktops, laptops, and tablets. While there’s a battle over whether or not tablets will ever replace traditional PCs, the facts are that the trends in both are down. And to back up that realization, Google and parent company Alphabet are reportedly moving dozens of engineers off the laptop and tablet teams.

Goodbye to Pixel Laptops and Tablets

This was something we just recently wrote about last week, that the IDC believes both the PC market and tablet markets are declining, as they lumped them together in the “personal computing device shipments.” They believe the category will continue to show a slow decline over the next five years.

Google either read the same report or did enough of their own research to know this is where the trend is heading. They attribute their transfer of “dozens” of employees outside of manufacturing roles from the laptop and tablet hardware teams to “roadmap cutbacks.” If you’re looking for the next, best Pixelbook laptop or Pixel Slate tablet, you can stop waiting, as it looks like it’s not going to happen.

The employees being moved include hardware engineers and technical program managers. They probably aren’t too surprised, as their projects have been canceled in the last few weeks. They were told to find temporary projects to work on elsewhere in the company.

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There are plenty of other hardware teams for them to move to, meaning their employment status probably isn’t in jeopardy. Google also produces the Pixel smartphone, Home smart speakers, the Nest line of smart home devices, Chromecast dongles, Wi-Fi routers, and the Daydream VT headset.

And for that matter, Google still has their line of Chromebooks that they work on with other manufacturers. But if you’re looking for a Pixel laptop or tablet, forget it. Not that they were extremely popular anyway, and with the knowledge that the market is slowly falling for them, it only seems like Google is putting those products out of their misery.

Where the Future Is Headed

Perhaps what Google needs to do is move away from the laptops and tablets and towards detachables. The IDC data mentioned above found that category of personal computing device shipment shows that’s possibly where the market is headed., with an expected growth in five years of 4.6% annually.

But it’s definitely telling that a major player in the tech space like Google is moving away from tablets and laptops.

How does this news sit with you? Do you think Google is headed in the right direction by moving their engineers way from laptops and tablets? Let us know your thoughts on this move in the comments section below.

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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