Google's first retail store

In the late 90's we saw a shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online-only stores. It seems like you just can't do some things (like hard sells) with online-only stores. I think this decade is going to find a good balance between online and b&#38;m stores.<p>I think it is especially true with things you need to "play with" before you make a decision to buy - e.g. keyboards (and other input devices), tablets, phones, watches, etc.<p>Companies that have or are starting to have b&#38;m presences again: Apple, Google, Microsoft, SparkFun (yay, Microcenter!), RadioShack (the good-old RadioShack from the 80s and 90s, not upsell-the-phone RS. Still holding my breath for this one). Fry's was one of the survivors because it understood the need for customer-product interaction (imho), even though it did decline in customer service quality, which is a result of the race to the bottom price against internet-only stores.

"One selling point the staff are pushing is that unlike traditional PC’s, Chromebooks get better over time with automatic software updates."<p>That seems a bit disingenuous. PCs get better over time with software updates as well.

I like the confidence that the employees had to get the stopwatches out for the 8 second test.

I don't get it.<p>Why is Google so careful with opening more stores like this?<p>It seems pretty clear that such stores are extremely good at selling products to your average customer. Why not open dozens, even hundreds of them, all over the world?

Chromebook's claim to fame (or primary selling point) of 8 second boot-up is very gimmicky to me. People never hard power off their tablets and never need to for most notebooks. If they are, that's a usability issue they're having with the OS, not a limitation.<p>A fairer comparison is time to resume from standby. But then, Chromebook will have to push their other selling points.

hilarious.<p>“It’s so limited!” the man in his 20′s was saying while sitting in front of one of the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 devices, and idly playing with the clickable trackpad. He was saying this to two friends that had crowded around the device and a staff member who was managing to stay calm while defending the Chromebook’s existence. “For 350 quid [Brit-speak for pounds] you can get so much more.”<p>He looked up at the staff member and asked, hopefully, “Is this going to have iTunes?”<p>“No.”<p>“See what I mean!” he cried.<p>“There’s Grooveshark,” one of the friends piped up.<p>“All I’m saying is it’s a computer for solely online purposes. Why? You could just buy a netbook and install Chrome on it.” He gesticulated at the screen. “It’s just a shell with Internet.”