Google just made it a lot easier for college students to try the Chromebook for the first time.
On Friday, Google introduced the Chromebook Lending Library, a three-day, on-campus kiosk where students will be able to borrow Chromebooks for free.
Students can borrow a Chromebook on a first-come, first-serve basis, and can keep it for the entire three days the kiosk is on campus.
The Lending Library is visiting 12 different colleges across the country, starting from this week. It’s already made its first two stops at University of Colorado - Boulder and Penn State University, and is on its way to Syracuse and Texas State next week.
Google said more campuses will be added in the coming weeks.
Here’s the full list of schools:
This is a great move by Google to further expand its presence in the education sector. Most of the Chromebook sales came from the education industry last year, accounting for 85% of total sales. In 2013, 22% of U.S. school districts used Chromebooks.
Gartner predicts Chromebook sales will be a little over 5 million this year, which is only about 2% of the entire personal computer market. But sales are growing quickly, as it sold more than a million Chromebooks last quarter alone, compared to 2.1 million in all of last year. Gartner says sales will triple to 14.4 million by 2017.
Chromebooks run on an operating system called Chrome OS, which relies on internet connection for most of its functionality. It offers all the basic computing experience such as web browsing and running simple apps, and comes at a lot lower price than other laptops in the market.
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