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Why Google Needs Gadgets (wired.com)
Google will tomorrow launch the next generation of its smartphone with the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL. At the same time, the company will reportedly introduce a new Chrome OS-based laptop called the Pixelbook, a small smart speaker called the Google Home Mini, and new hardware for the Daydream VR platform. David Pierce, writing for Wired tries to make sense of it: You'd think having dominated search and email, created Chrome and YouTube, plus a self-driving car project, a handful of save-the-world enterprises, and the greatest advertising business in the history of the universe would be enough to keep Google busy. You certainly wouldn't think the folks in Mountain View would suddenly feel the urge to get into the smartphone game, a remarkably mature market where nobody but Samsung and Apple makes any money, and where Google's already ubiquitous thanks to Android. [...] As they say, hardware is hard. It's a ruthless and low-margin business, but it's also an important one. Building gadgets in-house gives Google an opportunity to assert itself beyond what any of its partners can offer. More importantly, it gives Google a chance to control its destiny in an increasingly uncertain time. Depending on Samsung is a dangerous game. Galaxy products are the most popular Android phones by far, and the prime iPhone competition. But every year, you can feel Samsung leaning a little further away from Google. It built the Bixby assistant, which competes directly with Google Assistant, and gave Bixby prime placement on its phones. Samsung builds its own browser, email client, and messaging app, which seem utterly redundant unless Samsung's trying to wean its reliance on Google products. Samsung mostly eschews Daydream in favor of Gear VR, and has a home-grown smart-home platform competing directly with Nest, Android Things, and all the other Google connected-home products.
>> created Chrome and YouTube
BOUGHT YouTube. FTFY. You'd probably also find that a lot of Google gadget expertise (including talent) was purchased from elsewhere if you got inside the Googleplex...
Motorola makes money. Huawei makes money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Google needs to be able to sell bright shiny objects to distract the average person from the fact that they have fully embraced evil.
For a lot of companies their phones aren't supposed to be profitable, but to feed their other businesses. For Sony and LG it's to use up the glass left over from their TV and display factories and other parts they make. Why trash it when you can sell it. Samsung makes a lot of stuff and their phones send money to their CPU fabs and display factories.
Apple is the only one who knows how to make money on phones as a stand alone business. But with Apple it seems like their business is just making you buy yet another device that runs some version of OS X
Google, now Alphabet, is going for the digital monopoly. Complete and total vertical and horizontal integration.
That's it. That's the sum total of why Google is doing this. It has nothing to do with Samsung, Apple, or anyone else. It never did and never will. Google wants to run everything digital through itself. It could care less about the rest of the internet for so long as you start at their gate and they can record when you left and re-entered. It knows it can't stop you from going to Netflix, Slingbox, Hulu, or anywhere else but it can damn sure make it have a nice spot on any number of devices you own. A nice little gateway that can record what you do and when you do it.
It's not about "not being evil" or any such nonsense. It was always about being the first, last, and only place you go to get stuff done on the internet.
Seriously? When did we decide to replace straightforward English with "randomize the words, people will figure it out"?
Android is increasingly getting diluted, as every company wants their own branding, ads, and analytics.
I have no interest in Samsung branded stuff, nor do I want the branded stuff of any OEM. I don't want a phone which is really just there to collect my personal information and show me ads. I want a phone which lets me control what an app can and can't do, without having the vendor embed shit I don't want and can't get rid of.
If Google can't keep a vanilla version of the Android out there we can all access and not be held captive to the corporate branding which is making Android a pile of shit, Android itself it in deep trouble.
The problem with companies making all of their own browsers and everything else, is it introduces potential security issues which will never be fixed, pointlessly fragments the market, and creates more shit which is never going to be supported as the vendor makes the device and then never maintains it. All so those companies can apply corporate branding, and inject their own crap to collect your data and maximize their revenue streams. Sorry, I'm not your revenue stream.
If Google isn't going to keep the Nexus versions alive so we can choose to not get this vendor specific crap, then I'm going to permanently switch to iOS. At least it gives the ability to turn some of this crap off, but I'm pretty sure Samsung isn't going to let you disable their ads and other shit.
I fear mobile devices are becoming a horrible example of crapware, vendor lock in, and fragmentation. In which case I'll go back to a feature phone that isn't full of all of this garbage.
Google is like Microsoft in having two great franchises - email and search - that are like huge cash cows, just like Windows and Office. And like Microsoft, Google takes those huge piles of cash from their winners and throws it onto the dumpster fire of their money-losers. This would include stuff like their social network, their hardware business (they even aped Microsoft ruining Nokia by buying and ruining Motorola), and their vaporware self-driving cars. They also are going down Microsoft's path flailing for long-lost clarity through re-orgs. Google turning into "Alphabet" is latest example; before that it was The Culling that went on at Google Labs along with showing Marissa the (cold shoulder) door.
His rant makes him sound stupid as shit. He changes his stance because he witnessed this? What? I'm so confused. Of course a person with a legal gun couldn't of done anything, the dude was 32 stories up in a fucking window.
The argument that a person with a legal gun makes the situation worse is only true in certain scenarios.
sucking up to everything & spewing it back at us in some deceptive perfect balance mutation form fed fashion.. more of a gottiesque invasion on our waning wholesomeness than a 'business'? cease fire stand down,, there are moms & babys in every one of our towns... look us up..
How many times do these tech writers regurgitate the same bullshit over and over? Its pretty clear they are writing fluff prices or are being paid to write about this stuff by the company in the article. Google has tried and tried and tried to build hardware. It has failed on a monumental level. Pixel phones are cool to talk about, but they don't sell in meaningful quantities. They are made by HTC anyway, not Google. Google purchased HTC because why not. They also purchased Motorola to do the same thing and have tried over and over again to sell other peripherals not related to search only to find people underwhelmed by the product or to see Google abandon the project. What is really different about Motorola vs. HTC? Motorola had a much larger phone business than HTC and it still failed under Google leadership. Google will always have some hardware on the market, but like Microsoft, won't sell enough of it to truly diversify their business. Its like Microsoft making mice and keyboards and tech writers claiming that without this hardware Microsoft is a one trick pony. Microsoft never made any legitimate revenue off peripherals, and Google will never make any meaningful money off hardware like phones, glasses, speakers, chrome casts, etc. I see the appeal from Google's viewpoint. They want a standard piece of hardware that they can test and control their software on to provide an example for other OEMs to follow. Bu the issue here is Google provides the same shitty support on their devices as the OEMs. So what is the difference? Not preloading shitty software? Not skinning the device? THAT'S your idea of differentiation? boring. Utter shit. also-ran. I honestly feel bad for people who can't get updates past a hard-set two-year mark. Google is a first class advertising company. They do a lot of research in medicine, AI, and driving. But they don't make their own hardware. they don't control their own chips. And if they got serious about security, their marketshare would shrink because prices would go up 30%. They don't care about hardware. They care about people doing searches, and right now, everyone searches on their phone.
Up next by these same writers: Why people will stop buying iPhones and how Apple is doomed because they don't sell a $200 phone. Or Why Apple is doomed because they only derive 65% of their revenues from a single source (vs. Googles 90%). Its just paid-for rubbish.
...unless you are a Chinese kid making them.
Google Gadgets looks like it has seen its best years
Nullius in verba
Samsung needs to cover its arse in case Google becomes a new Apple. They are nowhere near challenging, just keeping an option open.
For Google (and most digital companies), people are its product. The phones, browsers, and IoT devices are just how it keeps track of its inventory.