What are they trying to gain with this product? Financial incentives obviously won't be the reason as this can only be a loss leader. They have zero chance competing against Apple in the entry market after Apple introduced the neo and obviously no chance in the lucrative premium market against the Apple.

This is not an Apple competitor, this looks to me like a rebranding of Chromebook with a bunch of AI sprinkled on top. (There's very little market overlap between the Chromebook and practically any Apple product.)

My guess is that they wanted to name this Geminibook but couldn't for some ultimately uninteresting reason.

Not sure if it matters that they compete with Apple blow-for-blow, it's probably just the threat of existential risk if they don't own any platform. They want to make sure they don't get Facebook'd by Apple if/when they decide to go fully vertical on AI.