Google has been dabbling in hardware for a very long time, but it's only been in the past couple of years that we've seen them double down on making smart speakers, phones, VR headsets, earbuds, and everything else that they're currently selling on the Google Store. And despite that rocky start, it looks like Google's hardware division will have generated $20 billion in revenue by 2021, which is a pretty massive success for an advertising company.
Analysts think that Google has finally hit the point where they're gaining traction with suppliers and users, especially with the Pixel line of phones that typically get excellent reviews. Google Home speakers are increasingly popular, too, even with some serious competition from Amazon.
While you likely won't ever see Alphabet move away from advertising, since that's what has always made Google piles and piles of money, this investment into hardware helps to keep the company growing in both market and mindshare, and it helps out a ton with their machine learning and AI ventures, which in turn help to sell more ads.
So for anyone worried that the Pixel phones or laptops or Google Homes would go the way of Google Reader, Inbox, Google+, or any of their other failed experiments, it looks like most of the hardware is here to stay. Not counting Google Glass, of course.
source: CNBC
