Member-only story
Google’s Most Interesting Hardware Announcements, Ranked
A router that talks, an AirPods rival, and a phone you might actually buy
In a distinctly low-key launch event at New York’s Hudson Yards on Tuesday, Google executives calmly unveiled an array of products we mostly already knew about. But if the announcements felt a bit anticlimactic, on the surface, they also clarified a vision of computing’s future that is more radical than any single gadget or feature.
This event, called Made by Google, was officially the company’s annual hardware showcase. But Google is so software-focused that its services are often the most interesting part of the hardware, and that was the case with many of its announcements today. Even so, Google seems to be getting marginally more serious about producing appealing devices for a mainstream audience, as opposed to a cadre of savvy techies and Googlers with money to burn.
I’ve ranked the announcements according to my entirely subjective criteria for interestingness, which I define largely as their potential to alter, in some meaningful way, the technology industry or our relationship to it.
1. A router that’s also a smart speaker
The new Pixel 4 phones will make the most headlines, but the gadget with the most interesting implications is the new Nest Wi-Fi system. It’s the replacement for Google Wi-Fi, the popular mesh router system that the company introduced in 2016, and which Google claimed is the bestselling router in the United States and Canada. (It may have helped Google achieve this status that the company sold only one model, whereas rivals such as Netgear and TP-Link sell a variety of routers.)
Nest Wi-Fi’s technology is no longer revolutionary, and in fact it doesn’t seem all that different from the previous system, except that the default package now comes in two pieces — one router and one “point” — instead of three. (You can customize it however you want, though.) Google opted not…
