Google Will Kill Its $5,000 Jamboard
Originally aimed at schools and businesses, Google Jamboard launched as a digital whiteboard allowing real-time collaboration from anywhere you could find two of the devices. But after eight years, Google will wind down the hardware and the cloud apps in late 2024.
Like the Surface Hub, the Google Jamboad is a great big-screen device that isn't meant to go in your home. Instead, you place it in a conference room or classroom and use it much like a traditional whiteboard. With internet connectivity, it's far more capable than an old-school whiteboard, but that connectivity requirement is one of its main downsides.
The shutdown doesn't mean schools and businesses lose all their data. Google promises to work with third-party apps FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro on a "retention and migration path" that it plans to provide at a later unspecified date.
Alas, the giant 55-inch touch screen will become the heaviest paperweight stuck to a wall. That's in part because the Jamboard doesn't run a traditional OS. It technically houses Android, but it's heavily customized to the point that you'd never know what really drives the experience. In the end, there's no upgrade or out path. And again, without local storage, there's not much you could do with the device, even if you did get another OS onto it.
Support for the Jamboard, including updates, will end on Sept. 30, 2024. If you have an upcoming subscription renewal, you'll only be able to renew for a period that ends on that date. After Oct. 1, 2024, you won't be able to create new "Jams" (what Google calls whiteboard slides), and the Jamboard app will go into "view only" mode sometime between then and December. After Dec. 31, all Jam files will be deleted from the cloud, so it's
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