Why Google bothered to make the Chromebook Pixel

As someone who already owns and loves a Chromebook, I've been trying to wrap my head around why Google dedicated R&D, manufacturing and marketing effort to the Chromebook Pixel. The Pixel is clearly not a cheap, simple portal to the Web in the mold of other Chromebooks. It has frilly features like a touch screen with a Retina display-matching 2560-by-1700 resolution, an anodized aluminum chassis, and a trio of noise-canceling microphones. The glamor doesn't stop there, though. The Pixel's outer beauty is matched by some beastly (for a Chromebook) hardware specs. It boasts an Intel Core i5 processor that thoroughly out-muscles the low-end Celeron chips found in most other Chromebooks, and 32GB of storage that's far more than what's necessary for Chrome OS. That's a lot of polish and performance for an operating system that revolves around a web browser. And at a starting price of $1,299, it's hard to imagine the Chromebook Pixel selling well. Google already has a hard enough time selling the world on cheap Chromebooks, let alone super-expensive ones. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here