Google’s past bugs were in full view at I / O 2022

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

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

Unfortunately, the company does not have that kind of top-down direction. Instead, for most of the resurgent products, Google is trying to catch up with competitors after years of standing still. There is a question we need to ask for each message: “Will things 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 actual tablet hardware was the Pixel C in 2015. Android’s tablet user interface has been gone for a while. Its development peaked with the first release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb in 2011, and each subsequent Android release and Google app update diluted the tablet interface until it disappeared. App developers took Google’s neglect as a sign that they should also stop making Android tablets, and the ecosystem fell apart.

Following the 2015 Pixel C release, Google left the tablet market for three years and then launched the Pixel Slate Chrome OS tablet. It then left the tablet market for another three years. Now it’s back. Will the company’s new plans produce another one-year marvel like the Pixel Slate?

Some of the biggest tablet news from the show was that Google is really committing to developing tablet apps again. The company announced that it would bring tablet interfaces to over 20 Google apps, and it showed screenshots for most of them. Tablet versions of Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, Chrome and a bunch of other heavy hitters were all on display. Google even got some third parties committed to making 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 scheduled for the very distant date “sometime in 2023.” It is a wide screen tablet with a great look and regular phone apps will not look good on it. I’m wondering here, but the Pixel tablet looks cheap. I do not say it as a little bit against the product; I mean, it seems targeted to compete more with Amazon Fire tablets than iPads.

The product only got a 30 second teaser on Google I / O, but Google showed what looks like a thicker tablet, which is usually a hallmark of a cheaper device. The lone camera on the back looked like a cheap pinhole camera in the basement, and the back can even be made of plastic. If Google were to target the iPad, we would probably have seen a thinner design and a bunch of accessories, like a pen and a keyboard.

Going for the Fire tablet would make sense. They are the most popular (fork-shaped) Android tablets on the market. Given Google’s immature tablet ecosystem, it would be easier to win people over to a cheaper product than charging a premium right out of the gate. This would not be new either, as the Nexus 7 line defined cheap tablets for a few years until Google lost interest.

Google’s presentation also fit perfectly with the rumor that the company’s next “smart display” would be a removable 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 that the Fire tablets do today, giving more faith in the idea that Google wants to compete with Amazon products.

So far, all this work is making it look like Google is trying to get back what it threw away shortly after the release of Honeycomb. The company already released a tablet-centric update for Android in March — Android 12L — but it was far less ambitious than the Honeycomb release. Android 13 will continue with a little more tablet work.

The advent of foldable devices has also changed the market and these devices need tablet apps to work well. If people with the flagship Android phones suddenly have devices that open up to tablets, the market for tablet apps would be much stronger. Assuming the foldable future really happens, more and more devices will demand app designs on big screens, even though the standalone Android tablet is at rock bottom.