When I wrote this piece on May 20, 2016, the idea that Android apps running inside Chrome could become a real threat to Microsoft felt like an early warning shot — a sign that Google was experimenting with ways to pull Windows users into its ecosystem without needing Windows at all.
A decade later, Googlebooks takes that same core idea and pushes it into the agentic era: Android PCs with a built‑in assistant layer that can act, automate, and mediate the entire computing experience.
Looking back, the 2016 article reads less like a prediction and more like the first chapter of a story Google is finally ready to finish, while Microsoft is still defining what Windows should become in response. — Daniel Rubino, Editor-in-Chief
This article was originally published on May 20th, 2016, by Daniel Rubino.
