Made by Google 2018: It’s About More Than Hardware (Premium)

This week, Google announced new smartphones, Chromebooks, and smart home devices. But if that's all you got from the event, you're missing the point.

As I noted after last year's Google hardware event, what the search giant is really doing is establishing itself as the leader in modern platforms, thanks largely to its AI prowess. And while this week's event was ostensibly about new hardware, Google was really just pushing AI, software, and for the first time so explicitly, even design.

"Delivering information has always been in our DNA," Rick Osterloh said at the Made by Google 2018 launch event, marking Google's 20th anniversary. "We love [solving] really hard problems that make life easier for people in big and small ways ... That focus has caused us to push into many new areas."

Given Google's primary user-facing service, Internet search, it is perhaps not surprising that the firm has emerged as an AI leader. To be successful, Google needs to understand context, to be able to translate languages on the fly, and to connect people to the information they want instantaneously.

All this work forms the backdrop, the foundation, of Google's hardware offerings. That is, Google doesn't just make phones, or computers, or smart home devices. It makes devices that mold to their users' needs and preferences, and become more valuable over time.

"Your devices understand you when you talk to them," Osterloh said. "From searching, to translating, to getting a great photo of the world, when we see an opportunity to help people, we go the extra mile. Our deep investment in AI over many years is at the core of our ability to push forward in many areas at once."

And it's not just AI. Increasingly, we expect our most personal devices to evoke feelings of warmth, humanity, and familiarity as well. We want them to work well, for sure, but we also want them to look great. To blend into our homes, and into our lives.

So, yes. There are new versions of existing products. Entirely new products. But there are also new AI-powered features. New colors and textures. New shapes and form factors. The real power of Google's aggressive advances lies in the combinations of these things. In the software, the services. In the AI, as before. But in the design as well.

With all that in mind, here are some of my key takeaways from Google's event this week.
This is really about trust
While I understand that many readers will viscerally disagree with this notion, Google's push into consumer hardware products is really part of a wider effort that centers on trust. That is, users of Google's online services---and now its hardware products---must trust the company to do the right thing for them.

Osterloh never framed it this way. But the three tenets he did mention---basically personalization, security, and digital wellbeing---all speak to this notion of trust.

That is, Google's users trust that their Google experiences will be deeply personalized t...