Google’s touchscreen Chromebook announced, just not in Australia

You might not think of Google when you think of laptops, but the search engine giant that controls a pretty big chunk of the mobile platform space is getting into touchscreen notebooks, too. Just not where we live.

Announced overseas this week, Google has a new laptop computer that runs an operating system that isn’t Windows or Mac. Instead, Google’s Chromebook runs a similarly named Chrome OS, a platform that Google has created for mostly online use, with applications linked to Google’s Chrome browser that still includes text editing, office apps, and a whole lot more.

It’s not the first Google Chromebook announcement, though, with Samsung and Acer making the first Chromebooks in mid-2011, but this week’s Google Chromebook is the first to incorporate touch and a high resolution screen.

The machine, which is made from aluminium and runs on an Intel Core i5 processor with 4GB RAM and 32GB solid-state storage, runs a 12.85 inch display supporting the slightly unorthodox 3:2 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2560×1700, which shows 239 pixels per inch, slightly higher clarity than the 226ppi in Apple’s 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina and the 220ppi in the 15 inch version of that computer.

With specs like that, Google is calling this the Chromebook Pixel, and rightfully so, given how many pixels per inch it packs in.

Google’s high-res display also features multitouch, making the web more receptive to poking and prodding with your fingers, and any other app which runs on Google’s Chrome-based operating system, for that matter.

And while the storage amount inside the computer isn’t amazing, Google is providing 1TB of space online in the cloud for people who buy.

That said, Australians may be out of luck when it comes to trying to buy this new computer. Even though the new machine starts at $1299 in the US (or $1449 for a 4G LTE capable edition), it won’t be for sale in Australia at this time.

While we’ve contacted Google for comment on why this laptop doesn’t have a local release date, past experience and a lack of any Chromebook computer being released in Australia suggests Google isn’t ready to release Chromebooks locally.