The pixel phones on the other hand have been selling better ( in fact grew quite a bit numbers wise as well ). The phone line has a better chance of turning in to the Googles surface line esp. since the marketing around that has been "Its the best camera ever" and people are willing to pay a premium for that.
I also bought another Chromebook at BestBuy that was ~$250.
I was blown away by another Chromebook that had a 17" screen and was less than $300 at the store. I was overwhelmed by the options (and BestBuy never helps because their employees must be rated on how well they can hide in the store and not how well they can help customers).
There are plenty of options in store and online, most of which hover around the $300 price point, which is very competitive.
If you are buying a Pixelbook you are buying it because you want Linux on it, or the amazing screen, and are calculating that into it. If you want an inexpensive Chromebook, you aren't stymied in that search by price.
Outside that they are even less than the worldwide GNU/Linux desktop market, hardly a measure of success.
The monopoly that Apple does not have on smartphones as a whole, and the consequent constraints on its ability to dictate the functionality of the mobile web, to capture mobile web and app advertising revenue, etc.
That's the success of Android.
A duopoly between two non-Google vendors (especially if they were effectively two monopolies in distinct market segments) would scarcely have been better for Google than a non-Google monopoly, so even if a low-end smartphone market existed and was substantial without Android, and your perception above in regard to Apple staying out of it without Android is correct, that doesn't materially change the nature of the success of Android for Google.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit/ora...
The first line at your link: "...revenue of about $31 billion and profit of $22 billion..." Again, fake numbers, but wow that's profitable.
22 billion in profit in almost a decade for having 80% of the market is peanuts.
Google has paid more than that to Apple for being the default search engine on iOS for the same time period.
Much of your analysis in this thread suffers from a form of wishful thinking. I suspect you are a fan of "iPhone" devices.
Google makes the Pixelbook. It is definitely not the "best" laptop when you consider less expensive alternatives, and it is not the best seller.
But, Android would be called a successful strategy.
And, Chromebooks would be called a successful strategy.
What I'm trying to say (and would love to hear comments suggesting otherwise) is that these forays into hardware might just be to guarantee a baseline level of quality for vendors of the products to aspire to. And, in that light, even if the hardware divisions aren't making a dent in the Google's reported revenue, they still serve and were effective in their goals.
These cutbacks are just evidence that Google wants to optimize the way things are done, not evidence that they were failures.
GCP is a different beast, however. :)