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Google Assistant might be expanding to more Chromebooks following Pixelbook debut

Google’s Pixelbook has done a lot to renew interest in the company’s Chrome OS platform, and it marked a lot of firsts for the operating system as well. One of those was the debut of Google Assistant on a laptop, and now, it seems that functionality is expanding to other machines.

A commit discovered by XDA-Developers hints at the possibility that Assistant could be making the jump from being a Pixelbook exclusive, to a tool available to all Chrome OS users. This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this, but this new information provides a bit more insight on how we’ll see it implemented.

The commit shows that Assitant will be disabled by default on Chrome OS, with OEMs having the easy option of enabling the functionality if they choose to do so. A further setting will allow the ability to toggle on or off the always-listening “OK Google” and “Hey Google” hotwords. Apparently, it won’t be too hard to add a dedicated Assistant button either, just like on the Pixelbook.

Currently, there’s no indication on if any Chromebook makers are planning to take advantage of Assistant on their upcoming releases, so for now, we’ll have to wait and see.


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