“Road-map cutbacks” have been cited as the instigator for Google slashing their future laptops/tablets and pushing their hardware employees to other projects ‘temporarily'.
Google has made many attempts at building their own hardware; from long-forgotten netbooks to their line of ‘Nexus' phones and oddities like the ‘Nexus Q', to their current line of ‘Pixel' chromebooks, phones, chrome convertible and chrome tablet. However none save their Pixel phones have seen more than a sliver of success, with a large portion being straight-up flops.
Google did look to be turning that around somewhat when they released their ‘Pixelbook' in late 2017. The successor to their ‘Chromebook Pixels', it built on their legacy with an evolutionary minimalist aesthetic in a sleek, thin body with an excellent display (albeit with large bezels), fantastic keyboard, and fluid software experience on Google's ever-iterating ChromeOS platform.
Unfortunately, Google was yet again unable to reproduce this critical success when, a year later, they unveiled the ‘Pixel Slate' which built off the Pixelbook by separating the device into a tablet with an attachable keyboard, along with all the baggage that brings. The general poor quality, software issues, and astronomical pricing didn't help matters either.
Well, much like their messaging teams at Allo, Hangouts, and all the projects before them, Google's ‘Create' hardware team is now being axed – at least ‘temporarily'.
Citing “road-map cutbacks”, Google has told dozens of their hardware engineers, program managers, and their supporting roles to find new roles within the company's other divisions until the hiatus is supposedly ended.
At the same time, Google's future hardware plans (at least for Chromebooks and similar) have now been axed. So if and when the ‘Create' team is resumed, they'll be working on all-new projects.
Google declined to give any specific reasons for these decisions, however there are two possible and indeed quite plausible, mutually-inexclusive causes I can see:
Firstly, the hardware team has been put on hold because the hardware hasn't been living up to Google's hopes both critically and financially.
And secondly, and far more interestingly yet less likely, perhaps Google is reorganising itself around its upcoming ‘Fuchsia' mobile operating system.
Google's Fuchsia OS project began a few years ago as an entirely new unified and versatile operating system for devices from Google Home's to Chromebook replacements to tablets and phones, built from the ground-up on Google's own Dart programming language.
I could see Google cancelling its future Chrome hardware plans and pausing its relevant division until Fuchsia has matured and is nearing public readiness for an all-new line of unified devices.
Either way, it's interesting and not a little bit disappointing to see Google make this move, however considering no employees have lost their jobs and the potential for this all to be for a better hardware future, maybe it will be worth it?
Source: AndroidCentral
They should can the whole Pixel team. Stick to software, Google!
The Nexus 7 was wildly popular. The Pixel C was a complete failure.
So what do they do? Build a Pixel Slate that’s overpriced and too big, just like the Pixel C.
Canning the hardware division is probably a good idea if these are the decisions they’re making.
It really feels like they’re chasing Apple instead of playing to their own strengths.
I wish they’d focus on making their own phone hardware (CPU) first and then expand to other devices.