Why Google made a phone

The world’s biggest search company has gone all-in on hardware. Here’s why…

So Google has released a phone.

It basically looks like an iPhone, except with the home button on the back, a bevel around the edge of the phone instead of a curve, and a tinted back with one bit glossy and the other a matte finish.

It’s running Android, but this version’s a bit different. And that’s the most significant part of this whole move by the search giant.

Along with the phone, at its October 5th event it showed off Google Assistant which is really Google’s biggest play.

Siri sucks, Cortana is just getting started and Amazon’s Alexa seems ok but still a bit of a novelty. So there’s a real opening here as far as nailing the digital assistant goes.

But also, Google’s entire business is heavily dependent on the dominance of its search engine. And one can assume that typing queries into a search box won’t be the way we search for things forever.

In the phone, Google sees an opportunity to learn a lot about you and what you need. With every iteration of Android they’ve baked Google search deeper and deeper into everything on that operating system. And this phone’s version of Android brings that to a whole new level.

But most of all, the phone — confusingly named Pixel, Phone by Google — and some of the other hardware the company announced including Google Home — the small speaker that looks like an air freshener — is its biggest push yet to make AI the next search engine.

Saying “Ok Google” prompts each device to start listening, and everything it hears is information it uses to build a profile of you. Which means a couple of things: over time it’ll become more and more useful for you: predicting what you want, what you’ll like etc. But, two, it’s more data on you that it can sell to advertisers, as is usually the case.

So, yeah. Google’s move into hardware is really significant. You’ve got a weird looking iPhone, a cute little speaker, a headset that looks like it was made from material cut from your couch, a hockey puck and some sort of futuristic urn.

But be under no illusion. This move is not about Google getting into the hardware business. It’s about protecting the future of its search one.