Let’s call assistant

So today, in one big swoop, Google’s rolling out their iPhone, their Eero, their Amazon Echo and their Samsung Gear VR. This is one big catch-up with everyone else in “look now we do our own hardware too,” which is a HUGE pivot for them. Time was, the Nexus phones were meant to be a reference design that just happened to be unlocked and assured of getting updates. Buying a Nexus gave you the feature set that the rest of the Android ecosystem would get next year – and you’d be getting software updates next year too. But those Nexus phones rotated between different makers – HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola – and this time, even though HTC is doing the manufacturing, Google wants you to know the Pixel is THE Google Phone, moreso than any of its predecessors.

Here’s the thing with that: with Google now doing this themselves, there is absolutely no reason to buy an Android phone from another maker unless you simply can’t afford it – because with the demise of Google-Motorola, any promise of future upgrades is gone (hell, Lenovorola won’t even commit to ship the security updates in a timely fashion). And with the demise of Nexus, that $300-400-range Android that will get routine updates is also gone. For the first time, Google is nailing its colors to playing on the exact same field as the iPhone – if not more so, because they don’t have a Pixel SE. They’re starting at the same $649 price point which is the entry point for flagship premium phones in 2016. Not for nothing, too, the Pixel (the 5” model) is a hair larger than the iPhone 7, which is not surprising under the circumstances…but the iPhone 7 (and its 6/S forebears) were already just a hair too big for me. Be that as it may.

Too, the Google Pixel is a Verizon exclusive, because CDMA-based phones still require some amount of carrier involvement. If you like, you can just buy the unlocked model for the same price for your AT&T or T-Mobile SIM and get going yourself. (There’s no call for setting it up on Sprint because Sprint is shite.) But again – $650. This isn’t like a couple years ago when the Nexus 5 was as good a phone as you could buy for $350 unlocked, or even last year when the 3rd-gen Moto G would get you 80% of the way there for $200. This is iPhone pricing, and will have to deliver an iPhone-caliber premium experience. And significantly, the user-facing UI is now the Pixel Launcher, which is for all intents and purposes Google’s answer to TouchWiz or the old Android skins: they now have a custom UI of their own to lay on top of the AOSP pieces just like anyone else. Say farewell to “pure Android;” the best you can do now is “Google’s Android.”

And make no mistake, this is an All Google Everything setup. Huge huge HUGE chunks of this depend on machine learning and distributed processing and cloud storage, and it’s keyed to your Google account. Music streaming from YouTube (??), all your photos and videos stored for you at full resoultion in the cloud (where they can be visually identified as bears or trains or whatever).That’s where the privacy scare comes from – not that someone will necessarily hack Google and get it, but that at some point Google will make their own use of this data either to advertise against or possibly sell outright. For a company whose non-physical products are all “free at point of service” and whose revenue is explicitly based on advertising, this is not a comforting prospect. 

Google really wants Google Assistant to be your JARVIS. And as always, this comes down to how much you want to trade off – all you have to do is put your entire life into their grid. The phone, the voice device, everything is just another interface for The Google. Significant that they started with the phone and then went on through all the Google Assistant stuff in Google Home, which got just as much run.  Proof that the phone itself is just another UI, and the Assistant is the keystone product.  Everything is “______ by Google” now, whether it’s Phone or Home or Help or what. The trigger phrase is “OK Google.” Google is the whole big mysterious thing. Google is how you get to the Internet.

The problem, though, is the same as ever: for this to work as advertised, you have to go all-in. It needs your mail and your calendar. It needs to know where you live and work, what music apps you prefer, and to be honest in some places it’s going to need you on Google Fiber to have a data connection fast enough to make it worthwhile. Google really is the new Microsoft – only worse, because Microsoft only had you by the balls on your PCs. Between the services and the gadgets. Google’s kind of got you everywhere, whether you use it or not (this is where I point out that I don’t use Gmail but 80% of the people I correspond with in email do). This is really starting to get a sell-your-soul feel to it. Just give in and look how much easier your life will be. Only problem is waiting to see what the other shoe dropping consists of. 

Which is why launching with a Silicon Valley segment with Gilfoyle and Dinesh was a bit on-the-nose…because this is Google basically going full Hooli. 

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