Google: going for gold - FT.com Even if Google never sells many high-end laptops, that it is willing to try should frighten other tech companies. Last week Google introduced the Pixel, a $1,300 laptop with a super high-resolution touch screen and designed for use with web apps rather than installed software. Google's hardware strategy is well-known. Google's tablets, smartphones and Chromebooks are designed to drive demand for other Google services and put eyeballs on Google-served ads. It is easy to understand why Google would attack the low end of the laptop market with its previous $250 Chromebook laptops. Personal computer sales continue to plummet, and PC makers like Dell, HP and Lenovo barely eke out profits. In a contracting, commoditising industry an aggressive innovator with two cost advantages - no need to make a profit and no need to include pricey Microsoft software - has a chance to make waves. The Pixel serves notice that Google is not content to attack this market at its weakest point. Apple, presumably, makes strong profits on its laptops: it sold $17bn worth of them in its last fiscal year at an average of (wait for it) $1,300 a pop. And ultrabooks - thin, higher-end Windows laptops - are a rare brightspot in the laptop market with shipments expected to reach 44m units worldwide in 2013 and 95m by 2016, according to iSuppli. With the Pixel, Google is saying both Macs and Ultrabooks could use some competition, too. Has Google got the Pixel right? For all that money you get a machine that needs internet access to reach "cloud" applications to do anything at all. This may leave consumers cold. But with $12bn in ad revenues growing at over 20 per cent and its stock up 40 per cent in eight months, Google has earned the right, whether with pricey laptops or streaming music, to make a risky bet or two.