Are there recent Google devices that ship with ChromeOS ? While I believe that Android makes more sense (since it also has a browser and can run classical apps) I wonder what the state of ChromeOS is.
Tbh, I would pay an additional $500 to a company that cloned the hardware but offered at least a 512 GB hard disk. I've even give up the touch screen. I'd like a quad core Skylake upgrade while we're at it, but I'm not greedy, I just want a reasonable amount of disk. They could even price it at $2000 and I'd still buy it in a heartbeat. As is, I'm still using my Pixel 2 LS, albeit with a slimline USB key pseudo-permanently attached to provide extra space. Nothing else approaches the power and battery life of a Macbook Pro if I want fully supported hardware under Linux.
ChromeOS + Crouton + a decent SSD would make a killer development laptop.
If you're talking specifically about Google-branded devices (as opposed to e.g. an ASUS Chromebook) the Pixel 2 was released in March 2015, about 2 years after the original Pixel.