Google’s past failures were fully visible at I/O 2022

Google held its I/O conference earlier this month, and for longtime Google viewers, the event felt like a seance. Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage for his keynote address, conveying the ghosts of long-dead Google products. “I hear… something about an Android tablet? And a smartwatch?” he seemed to say.

By my count, “reviving the past” accounted for about half of the company’s major announcements. In all of these cases, Google would be in a much stronger position if it had committed to a long-term plan and iterated continuously.

Unfortunately, the company doesn’t have such a top-down direction. Instead, for most of its resurrected products, Google is trying to catch up with competitors after years of standstill. With every announcement we have to ask a question: “Will it be different this time?”

Android tablets are back

How Long Have Android Tablets Been Dead? Some companies, like Samsung, have never given up on the idea, but Google’s last piece of tablet hardware was the Pixel C in 2015. The Android tablet user interface has been gone for a while. Development peaked with the first release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb in 2011, and each subsequent Android release and Google app update watered down the tablet interface until it disappeared. App developers saw Google’s neglect as a sign that they should also stop making Android tablets, and the ecosystem fell apart.

After the Pixel C release of 2015, Google retired from the tablet market for three years and then launched the Pixel Slate Chrome-OS tablet. Then it stopped with the tablet market for another three years. Now it’s back. Will the company’s new plans deliver another one-year wonder like the Pixel Slate?

One of the biggest tablet news from the show was Google’s real commitment to tablet app development again. The company announced it would bring tablet interfaces to more than 20 Google apps, and it showed screenshots for most. Tablet versions of Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome, and a host of other heavy hitters were all featured. Google has even pushed some third parties to create Android tablet apps, including Facebook, Zoom, and TikTok. All of these will help make the Android tablet experience something worth investing in.

Google also announced a new tablet, the Pixel Tablet, with a release slated for the very distant “sometime in 2023” date. It’s a widescreen, big looking tablet and regular phone apps won’t look good. I’m speculating here, but the Pixel tablet looks cheap. I don’t say that as a minus to the product; I mean, it seems to be geared towards competing more with Amazon Fire tablets than iPads.

The product only got a 30-second teaser at Google I/O, but Google showed what looks like a thicker tablet, which is usually a hallmark of a cheaper device. The single rear camera looked like a bargain pinhole camera, and the back could even be plastic. If Google had wanted to focus on the iPad, we probably would have seen a thinner design and a stack of accessories, like a pen and keyboard.

It would make sense to go after the Fire tablet. They are the most popular (forked) Android tablets on the market. Given Google’s immature tablet ecosystem, it would be easier to win people over with a cheaper product than asking for a premium right away. This wouldn’t be new either, as the Nexus 7 line defined cheap tablets for a few years until Google lost interest.

Google’s presentation also matched the rumor that the company’s next “smart display” would be a detachable tablet. The last thing the teaser showed was a set of pogo pins, which could be for a smart display dock. Google also highlighted Google Nest camera smart home support, which is currently a smart display feature. Docked smart display mode is something the Fire tablets are doing these days, giving more credence to the idea that Google wants to compete with Amazon’s products.

All this work so far makes it seem like Google is trying to get back what it threw away shortly after Honeycomb’s release. The company already released a tablet-centric update to Android in March – Android 12L – but it was a lot less ambitious than the Honeycomb release. Android 13 continues with some more tablet work.

The rise of foldables has also changed the market and these devices require tablet apps to work properly. If people with flagship Android phones suddenly have devices that open up to tablets, the tablet app market would be a lot stronger. Assuming the foldable future actually happens, more and more devices will require big-screen app designs, even if the standalone Android tablet is completely blank.