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‘Eve’ Chromebook in the works w/ dedicated Assistant button and fingerprint sensor

Google Assistant continues to expand to more products and it’s looking more and more like Chromebooks are the next stop for Google’s take on AI. Rumors hit the web early this year that Google would be making this move and now a Chromebook in development is giving us a lot more evidence that this is happening.

‘Eve’ is a Chrome OS baseboard (the first step in developing a new Chrome OS device) which has been in development for the past few months. The upcoming machine appears to be a high-end Chromebook which Google will be introducing a handful of new features including Google Assistant which, at least on this machine, can be accessed via a dedicated button.

ChromeUnboxed recently spotted a commit that reveals a key on the keyboard that is designed to open Google Assistant. It’s a bit unclear if this will be a dedicated button or a key combination, but if it is the former, I’d speculate that it may replace the lock key found on many Chromebooks today.

It’s likely that Google Assistant on Chrome OS will behave a lot like it does on a phone, but with a slightly different UI. I’d imagine it will appear something along the lines of Cortana on Windows 10 machines.

Along with the Assistant button, ‘Eve’ is also apparently bringing “Wake on Voice” (always listening) support and support for a double-tap feature of some sort. It’s unclear what that feature entails, though.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about ‘Eve,’ including who is making it and what sort of specifications it will run on top of. From the look of it so far, it certainly seems like this is a higher-end Chromebook perhaps in the same vein as the Samsung Chromebook Plus/Pro or ASUS C302CA. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see.


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