Google bringing Chromebooks to more retails stores including Walmart & Staples

Google announced today on its blog that it will begin selling Chromebooks through a number of new retail outlets that will bring the total up to around 6,600 stores worldwide. That’s around “3 times more stores than before” with the most notable additions including Walmart and Staples:

In addition to Best Buy and Amazon.com, we’re excited to welcome several new retailers to the family. Starting today, Walmart will be making the newest Acer Chromebook, which has a 16GB Solid State Drive (SSD), available in approximately 2,800 stores across the U.S., for just $199

Staples will begin selling Chromebooks from Acer, HP and Samsung in its more than 1,500 stores in the US and also through its online stores. Google also announced it will be adding a few other retail locations in the months to come, including: Office Depot, Office Max, and regional chains Fry’s and TigerDirect.

As for plans to expand international availability:

In addition to Dixons in the UK, now 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Mediamarket and Saturn stores in the Netherlands, FNAC stores in France and Elgiganten stores in Sweden. In Australia, all JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores will be carrying Chromebooks for their customers as well. We’re working hard to bring Chromebooks to even more countries later this year.