Eighteen months after announcing Chrome OS and six months after mailing out 60,000 free Cr-48 test laptops, Google finally had something to sell. At Google I/O in May 2011, the company introduced the first two retail Chromebooks and coined the word “Chromebook” itself. This is chapter three of our series on the complete history of the Chromebook.
Google I/O 2011: a name and a strategy
At I/O on May 11, 2011, Google announced that Chrome OS laptops would be called Chromebooks, and that the first two would come from Samsung and Acer. The choice of partners was the real news. Google wasn’t building this hardware itself: it was recruiting the PC industry, the same playbook it had used with Android phone makers. Any manufacturer could build a Chromebook to Google’s spec. That decision seeded today’s ecosystem, where Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, Dell, and Samsung all ship ChromeOS hardware.
Google also announced something quietly radical: Chromebooks for Business and Education, a subscription that bundled the laptop, a web-based management console, support, and hardware refreshes for a monthly fee — around $28 per user for business, $20 for schools. IT departments wouldn’t image machines; they’d set policies in a browser. Remember that console: it becomes the main character when we cover the education takeover later in this series.
The hardware: Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700
Both machines were evolved Cr-48s built on the same platform:
- Samsung Series 5: 12.1-inch 1280×800 display, dual-core Intel Atom N570, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, 8.5-hour battery. $429 for Wi-Fi, $499 with 3G.
- Acer AC700: 11.6-inch display, same Atom N570, slightly smaller battery, starting at $349.
Both kept the Cr-48’s signature choices: the search key where caps lock should be, the browser-key top row, instant boot from SSD, and a sealed, appliance-like design philosophy. Both went on sale in the US and parts of Europe on June 15, 2011, the Chromebook’s official retail birthday.
The reception: “a $429 browser”
Reviewers struggled with the value equation, and honestly, they had a point. For $429 you could buy a full Windows laptop, and the Series 5 cost more than many netbooks while doing, on paper, far less. The Atom processor still stuttered on heavy web pages and Flash video. Offline support remained thin. The verdict across the tech press converged on the same sentence: interesting idea, wrong price.
Sales figures were never officially released, which tells its own story. Analyst estimates put first-year Chromebook sales in the low hundreds of thousands — a rounding error next to Windows. By late 2011 plenty of commentators had already written the platform’s obituary.
Why it still matters today
What the critics missed was that 2011 locked in the structure of everything that followed. The multi-OEM model gave ChromeOS resilience no single device could — when one partner’s machine flopped, another’s sold. The management console and school subscription created the beachhead in education years before anyone noticed. And the “wrong price” lesson was learned fast: the next chapter of this story is a $249 Chromebook that changed the trajectory entirely.
If you’re weighing that same value question in 2026 — what a browser-first machine gets you versus a conventional laptop — our Chromebook vs laptop guide is the modern version of the debate that started with the Series 5, and the case for the platform starts with the three promises from 2009: speed, simplicity, security.
FAQ
What was the very first Chromebook?
The first retail Chromebooks were the Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700, both released June 15, 2011. If you count non-retail hardware, the Cr-48 pilot laptop (December 2010) came first.
How much did the first Chromebook cost?
The Acer AC700 started at $349 and the Samsung Series 5 at $429 ($499 with 3G). Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $490–$700 in 2026 dollars — far above the budget image Chromebooks later earned.
Did the first Chromebooks sell well?
No. Google never published numbers, and analyst estimates for the first year were in the low hundreds of thousands of units. Momentum only arrived with the $249 Samsung ARM Chromebook in late 2012.
Could the 2011 Chromebooks run Android apps?
No. They were pure web machines. Android app support arrived on Chrome OS in 2016, long after these models had left the market.
Next in the series: a $249 ARM-powered Samsung becomes Amazon’s best-selling laptop, and Chrome OS finally gets a real desktop.
