Google can't build a hardware universe around Google Assistant

Is Google making a big mistake?

The company is swapping its "mobile first" strategy for an "AI first" one, and it did so in such a public way. It's a bold move and probably necessary for a software company that wants to drive millions of hardware sales on the back of its Google Assistant.

Going forward, Google’s equation for new products appears to be something like this: “AI + software + hardware.” That implies that the base ingredient for the brand new Pixel 2 phones, Google Home Mini, Google Home Max, Google Pixel Buds, and that somewhat concerning Google Clips camera is artificial intelligence.

Consumers who have not exactly embraced the original Google Pixel phones may scratch their heads at the idea that mobile is a second-class citizen to artificial intelligence, something they barely understand and may, rightly or not, fear.

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Google isn't wrong. AI is the most important development in the consumer technology universe. It will drive hardware and software innovation across virtually every industry you can imagine. Most companies I talk to are either thinking about it or aggressively implementing it. AI and machine learning is at the core of Apple’s powerful A11 Fusion CPU inside the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X.

None of these companies, though, is putting AI ahead of the consumer electronics message. Google won’t be any different. Even with Wednesday’s hard AI push, it’s unlikely Google will use that phrase, “AI First” in its hardware commercials.

The wrong hub

For consumers, the common thread across all of Google’s products is Google Assistant. It’s the key to a potential world of ambient computing, where your home becomes an ever watchful, listening environment, ready to respond to requests or take autonomous actions based on input from Google’s growing network of smart, connected, Google Assistant-enabled devices.

For this Google Assistant ecosystem strategy to work, for Google to sell you several devices, it must convince consumers that they want to use Google Assistant — and that may be a problem.

If you think of a company’s product strategy as a wheel with a product at the hub and ancillary offerings on the spokes, you begin to see Google’s challenge.

For Apple, the hub is the iPhone. It’s the shiny object at the center that consumers buy almost regardless of price and frustrating feature changes. It generates sales in accessories like the AirPod, Apple watch and even Apple TV, and services like iCloud storage, Apple Music and Apple’s video content.

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Some might argue that Google wants to make Google Home the hub, with spokes leading to the Google Home Max, Google Home Mini and Google Pixel 2. While Google Home’s 23 percent home assistant market share pales in comparison to Amazon Echo’s 70 percent, at least Google has a footprint. Still, to work as a hub product, it needs to be ubiquitous and since it’s stuck at home, that’s impossible. Apple’s iPhone is always with you.

Google Pixel (and the upcoming Pixel 2) should be Google’s hub product, but, despite strong reviews, the Pixel has, according to comScore, just 0.7 percent of the smartphone market. You can’t build a hub around that, which is why Google is relying on Google Assistant. Software and intelligence is portable and can live in every single Google hardware product, providing a level of ubiquity that could take years for Google to build with hardware.

Google Assistant everywhere

Google Assistant will be in the Home devices, the all new Pixel 2s and Google Pixelbook. It is the intelligence tying together disparate Google and Nest hardware (Google owns Nest). I was especially impressed with how Nest Hello, the connected, camera-enabled doorbell, could work with Google Chromecast and Google Home to respond to the query, “Show me who’s at the front door,” with a live video feed on the HDTV connected to Google Chrome.

But when it comes to the intelligence behind, for example, the real-time translation capabilities possible with Google’s Pixel Bud Bluetooth headphones, it’s Google Translate. And when Google Clips camera watches you, your family and your pets in the home and decides when to capture photos and videos, it’s Google’s powerful AI at work.

The cohesion that Google seeks simply breaks down, leaving no single compelling reason to buy one or more of Google’s hardware products.

If anything has the potential to draw more consumers to the Made by Google family, it's Google Photos. Google's cloud-based free media-storage system runs on any platform and skillfully saves and organizes high-resolution photos and video (not full) from mobile and fixed devices. People care more about their photos and video than almost everything else. Anything Google can do to strengthen the magnetism of that offering could help them in this hardware domination quest.

Unfortunately for Google, most people still use the cloud-based backup that comes with their respective devices. No one loves iCloud, but it has all of our media.

This all could change if Google Home takes an Amazon Echo like trajectory or the world tilts on its axis and Google sells 60 million Google Pixel 2 smartphones next quarter. If any of that happens, those devices will shift to the center of Google’s ever-expanding hardware wheel and it will finally start to roll.