Today, Google announced the expansion of its Chromebook lineup, with new devices running on Intel's power-saving Haswell processors, which could as much as double the battery life of current Chromebooks. From the Google announcement, it appears that HP, Acer, Asus, and Toshiba will be contributing products to the next generation of Chromebooks. We don't know many details about Toshiba's device or the Chromebox mini-desktop from Asus (both are newcomers to Chrome OS), but the product pages for the new HP Chromebook 14 and "The new Acer Chromebook" rate those devices at up to 9.5 and 8 hours of battery life respectively.

The last year or so has been big for Google's line of cloud-centric Chromebooks—starting with the $249 Samsung Chromebook, the devices finally found the combination of price, performance, build quality, and utility that they needed to become good alternatives to low-price Windows laptops. New partners like Acer, HP, and Lenovo offered greater variety in hardware. Dyed-in-the-wool Chrome OS lovers who wanted better hardware even got their wishes granted by the nice (if pricey) Chromebook Pixel.

The new pages for HP and Acer's new products don't list many other specs or any news about availability or pricing, but HP's current Pavilion Chromebook is $329.99 and the current Acer Chromebook is $199—we'd be surprised if the Haswell versions were much pricier. You can sign up for updates about the devices on their respective product pages, and they will be available in "the coming months."