Earlier this week, Google announced the new Asus Chromebox -- a Mac Mini-looking box running Google Chrome OS on Intel's new Haswell generation of chips. The new Chromebox came in three flavors, including an unusually beefed up Intel Core i7 variant with 4K video capability. Now we know Google's designs for the souped-up box: Google's entry into enterprise video conferencing.

Google announced on Thursday the "Chromebox for meetings," a suite of hardware and services based around the Asus Chromebox running the fourth generation Intel Core i7 "Haswell" processor. It's Google's entry into corporate computing -- and another assault on traditionally Windows OS territory.

Google is touting the Chromebox as an easier and cheaper way for corporations to keep in touch. The "Chromebox for meetings" comes with a Full HD 1080p camera, an omni-directional microphone/speaker combination, and a remote control with a full QWERTY keypad on the back.

It also comes with Google Cloud services and a tuned-up Google+ Hangouts, with H.323/SIP videoconferencing protocols from Vidyo and phone conferencing capabilities provided by Uberconference. The system can accommodate 15 people at once, and multiple rooms can be linked to each other for big group meetings. Any laptops, tablets, or smartphones can dial in on the conference as well with a Gmail account.

On the software side, Google is trying to make conferencing quicker and simpler -- eliminating complex dial-in codes, PINs or passcodes in favor of one-click access. And it's also trying to lower the entry cost for teleconferencing.

"Meetings rooms haven't really changed that much for last 25 years. Even when you want to change one by adding videoconferencing it turns out to be incredibly expensive and very complicated," said Google VP of product management Caesar Sengupta to The Register. "Over the years we've learned a lot about video meeting systems because we put them in our rooms on campus, and based on that, we've built a complete video meeting system that runs on top of Chrome hardware, and that's what we've bought to market at a fairly disruptive price."

"Chromebox for meetings" -- the whole kit plus a year's-worth of service and support -- is available from Asus for $999. After the first year, ongoing yearly service costs $250. The only thing it doesn't come with is a display.

The Asus Chromebox itself comes with a Core i7 processor, 4GB RAM, 16GB solid-state storage (with tons more from Google Drive), HDMI and DisplayPort sockets, four USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, Ethernet, and dual-band WiFi a/b/g/n. HP and Dell are also slated to release their own "Chromebox for meetings" in the coming months.

Other variants of the Asus Chromebox were recently announced for the general consumer, also at an incredibly low price. The base-level Asus Chromebox comes with a Haswell Celeron processor running at 1.4GHz, 2GB or 4GB of RAM, 16 GB of solid state storage (with 100GB for two years from Drive) and all of the ports mentioned before. It costs only $179 and will be released in March 2013. The Core i3 variant has similar specs, but can run 4K video as well. Its release date and price is yet to be announced.