Here at Android Police, we take pride and pity in covering what Google creates in one hand and kills with another. This year has seen plenty of additions to the graveyard, but what about the things that the company let live? How have they fared in critical view? And how will they continue to hold up? We take a look back... and forth.
Non-Google brands
The product from Google's dedicated smart home brand that almost certainly holds the widest appeal is the second-generation Nest Hub. Not much about the "smart display part" of the smart display has changed since the first one, but pocket change is always nice and buyers got to keep some with a price drop. The main value add here, though, is the radar-derived Sleep Sensing data suite. When beside your bed, it does its job for the most part but if you share your bed with a partner or a pet and they happen to take a nap, the data the Soli radars gather will need to be managed intermittently. Google had plans to charge for Sleep Sensing starting in 2022, but it seems to have realized there's work to be done, so tracking will remain free to use for the time being.
This summer, Nest came out with a battery of security cameras and a video doorbell — some of them actually running on batteries — with the main focuses being affordability and versatility. The battery-operated Nest Doorbell was a disappointment since we'd need to pay at least $6 per month for a Nest Aware subscription to be able to record events for a reasonable time. While live interaction with at-the-door guests might still be useful, having no way for the product on its own to "roll tape" for at least an overnight just ruined it for us. Our thoughts on the Nest Cam Battery are even more dire: having to use a proprietary cable to charge the device was a particularly sore oversight.
The Nest Cam indoor (wired), in its restricted theater, was reasonably usable with or without Nest Aware. The Nest Cam Floodlight, though we think is currently overpriced and could do with a better camera, also does well independently and serves a purpose that had been unfulfilled by the brand up to its launch.
Google has put in a groan-worthy effort of making Nest Aware not just a complementary, but near-obligatory purchase with these new products. Factoring out local storage by design in favor of the cloud might be forward-thinking, but paying for less-than-basic coverage and features like alert relays from beeping smoke and carbon monoxide detectors make this a resentment-driven buy. It tarnishes the Nest brand.
Google closed on its acquisition of fitness tracker maker Fitbit in January of this year though you'd hear a different story from the Department of Justice and Australian antitrust regulators as their investigations are set to continue through to 2022. In any case, it's only as a matter of business that we mention the Fitbit Luxe and Charge 5 as Google products, even if they're just remnants of the pre-buyout pipeline. Indeed, we found the Charge 5, in particular, to be uninspiring and reminiscent of status quo dinosaur-age product strategy prior to the meteor wiping it out. Hey, speaking of wearables...
Google Software and Services
No, the Galaxy Watch4 doesn't belong in this list as a Google product, but even with the involvement of Samsung, the investment Google has made in getting Wear OS right-sided and properly integrated with apps and services should make version 3 convincing enough for skeptical OEM partners to come back home. Consider this year's implementation of Wear OS as a strings-attached teaser for Google's own, long-awaited Pixel Watch.
Of minor note as well is Fuchsia OS which is taking over from Cast OS on Nest displays. Other than switching out coding languages, the experience is meant to be the exact same as it was before. We may eventually hear more about the sexy things like performance benchmarks and how new UXs will manifest, but right now, keeping things running and secure will be priority number one.
In the significantly hotter space of all-in-one subscription services, Google has introduced Pixel Pass which bundles in a new Pixel 6 phone on a lease-to-own plan with Preferred Care insurance and Google Fi cell service plus 200GB of Google One cloud storage, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music Premium, and Google Play Pass for a monthly payment over 2 years.
While the company attempts to cast a wide net, the package ultimately serves fans of the brand unlike its biggest competitor in Apple One — the peak paradigm difference is the gap in attractive content between YouTube and Apple TV+ — or even Samsung Access which bundles a phone, device protection, and Microsoft OneDrive and a 365 sub. Ideally, we'd see Pixel Pass expand on its own with a more generic version brought in tandem to support other potential Android users interested in Play Pass, YouTube, perhaps even Stadia. That service always looks like it needs an extra crutch.
Google Hardware
Apple, Samsung, and the like are keen on a Tower of Babel full of wireless earbuds where customers will have distinct expectations for each level. The Pixel Buds A-Series is the second of just two tiers newcomer Google has established. Compared with the second-gen Pixel Buds, the design and sound is more or less the same, there's no wireless charging, and it's cheaper. There's room for some quibbling about their intrinsic values, but at the end of the day, they're easy pickups, easy keepers, and rightful successors to the Pixel Buds 2.
Juxtapositioning how much praise the critics and masses gave the Pixel 3a with the nearly-complete vacuum left behind by the Pixel 6 phones, the Pixel 5a appears as an orphaned child. On its own track with A-series phones, it might just be good enough on its own with middle-of-the-road performance, simple software assurances only Google can provide, and a battery that will keep people satisfied. But alas, with the computational strength that the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro have demonstrated out of the gate at mouthwatering price points that have the potential to sink even further in certain retail scenarios through 2022, we're left wondering if a Pixel 6a proposition might fall short if our current speculation hold up right through to the end of summer 2022. In the opinion of this writer, Google wouldn't have me biting unless it strikes below $350.
No, we're not including things like Google's Original Potato Chips or the teacup-keyboard hybrid that's just living its best life in a GitHub repository. But we do need to include the Pixel Stand 2 as the latest and likely the last Google entry in 2021. In fact, it's only been made available in a meaningful sense in the last couple of weeks. Still, with 23W wireless charging and an experience enhancer for Pixel owners, we think it's a nice toy to have around. Let's just hope we don't hear about a recall order for some reason.
If we're going to own these products for any meaningful amount of time, it's important to have checkpoints like these where we can corral as much context as possible and guide expectations on how people may use them for years to come. Hopefully, 2022 for you will go as well as it does for your phone, camera, or watch.