If you buy a new Hewlett-Packard laptop in the next few weeks, then you’ll notice a new app on the “Start” menu called Google Essentials. On Thursday, Google announced that the new app will bundle some of its core services like Google Photos, Google Drive and Google Messages.
The Google Essentials app will not only house shortcuts to its most used services but it will also centralize your Google account information and saved materials such as documents, photos and saved games for titles from Google Play Games. Eligible subscribers will also receive a two month trial of Google One cloud storage with 100GB.
The blog posts says that Google Essentials will only be available on Windows PCs starting with new Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptops including models like the Spectre, Envy, Pavilion, OMEN and Victus. Google says it plans to make the Essentials app available on more Windows PC brands in the future.
The concept of a bundled Google services app sounds very similar to the old Windows Live Essentials. The collection of Microsoft applications allowed Windows users a quicker way to access apps like Mail, Movie Maker, Messenger and Writer. An archived version of the Windows Live Essentials installer is available on the Internet Archive.