Google discontinues the $999 Chromebook Pixel

Today Google and HP jointly unveiled the newest Chromebook, the Chromebook 13, featuring an Intel Core M chip, 16GB of RAM, a 32GB hard drive, a touchscreen, and a starting price of $499.

What wasn’t loudly announced was that today the Google Store also stopped letting people purchase the 2015 Chromebook Pixel that rocked a Core i5 chip, 8GB of RAM, a 32GB solid-state drive (SSD), a touchscreen, and a $999 price tag. And the Chromebook Pixel is exclusively available from the Google Store, which means that you can’t buy the base model of the device anywhere anymore. (Hat tip to Paul Thurrott for picking up on the change.)

Now the only Chromebook Pixel available is the $1,299 model, with an Intel Core i7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD.

Google PR also pointed that out: “The 8GB is out of stock but the 16GB is still available for sale,” a spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.

Alternatively, you can opt for the touch-enabled Asus Chromebook Flip, which starts at $279. Also available: the Pixel C (but it runs Android, not Chrome OS).

The yanking of the $999 Pixel follows the Nexus 9 tablet running out of stock in the Google Store earlier this week.

The decision to remove the $999 Pixel from the market does make sense, as HP’s latest Chromebook is a step up from, say, HP’s Chromebook 11 ($199.99) and Chromebook 14 ($249.99). There’s a little bit more room now for a mid-market Chromebook. In that category, you’ll also find the Dell Chromebook 13 — positioned last August as the “first premium professional Chromebook” — that starts at $399. If you want a Pixel, you’re going to have to go big, with a beefy Core i7 chip.

In a sense, though, this is going back to the roots of the Pixel line. There was no $999 Chromebook Pixel until Google came out with one last year. When the Pixel first launched in 2013, there was only one price point, and that was $1,299. Now that’s true once again.

Update at 4:49 p.m. Pacific: Added comment from Google.