Google Chromebook Pixel At $1300 - What's Google Thinking?

It has been two years since the first Chromebook was announced, and we're yet to see it getting significant traction in the market. This, however, hasn't stopped Google from unveiling a new iteration called Chromebook Pixel that sports a touchscreen, much like recent Windows 8 ultrabooks.

First the specs: The Pixel features a 12.8" display with a 3:2 aspect ratio. The screen has pixel dimensions of 2560x1700 (239 ppi), and is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass. It's powered by a dual-core Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, Intel HD Graphics 4000 and 4GB RAM. There's a backlit keyboard, and a 32 GB SSD (64 GB on LTE variant) 'only' since it is meant to be used "on the cloud".

To compensate for crippled storage, the search giant offers one Terabyte Google Drive cloud storage for three years. In short, the company wants you to save your data on their servers. Google goes on to say that Cloud is a better way of doing laptops. To prove its point, the official product page brags about faster boot-up times, built-in virus protection, and automatic (forced?) OS updates.

The Pixel will be available for purchase on Google Play in the U.S. and U.K. The Wi-Fi version is pegged at $1300 (Approx Rs 71,000), while the LTE version will set you back for $1450 (Rs 79,000).  After spending so much money, I'd want to take full control of my laptop. I'm not paranoid about privacy, but am not exactly trusting all my data on the cloud just yet. Need I mention how many times Sony's online service (PlayStation Network) got hacked last year? And it's not like Google is a saint. Google's involvement in the Wi-Fi information theft may be a one off, but still proof that one needs to think twice about opting for a cloud-only personal computing option.
Even if you choose to ignore these risks, there's another (bigger) bottleneck: scarcity of a reliable internet connection in most parts of the developing world, including India. Imagine not being able to access that important document because a power cut in your locality caused your ISP's connection to drop.