This Is Why the Pixel 3 Is a Verizon Exclusive

Google this week unveiled its new Pixel phones, and people are in one case once again wondering why they won't exist available on every major carrier. There's only one answer that makes sense, and you're going to detest it: Google doesn't want to sell a lot of phones, and it never has.

Opinions Not everyone agrees with me on this, but merely look at the evidence; information technology's the strategy Google has taken since the launch of its very kickoff Nexus phone.

Here in the United states, the new Pixel 3 phones volition exist offered past Verizon, Project Fi, and unlocked. Information technology will be available on all major Canadian carriers, but Canada is a smaller and less prominent market than the US.

Google is in a tough, weird identify with its Pixel phones. It always has been. Google'southward Android OS powers the vast majority of phones in the globe, fabricated by dozens of different companies. Google wants to make some great phones, conspicuously, but it besides doesn't desire to upset that apple cart. (So to speak.)

Remember, Google doesn't make a lot of money off hardware, and information technology doesn't really make coin from Android. Information technology makes coin from Google services, so it needs everyone to exist using Google services.

Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL

It'southward possible to use Android without Google services; just look at Chinese phone makers and Amazon'southward Burn down tablets. Samsung has also made information technology very public, for nearly a decade, that it keeps another OS in its back pocket in case it gets tired of Google. (That Os keeps irresolute, only the strategy remains the same.)

So Google needs to make sure its partners proceed putting Google Play Movies & TV and Google Search on their phones. Thus, it markets Pixels with a hand tied backside its back. It does a Verizon sectional and doesn't relentlessly pound you with Pixel ads in your Google searches. Information technology makes sure that Pixels are available, to be certain, just that they're not too available. It offers the industry an instance of what information technology believes is Android excellence, only makes certain there'southward however room for everyone.

Pixel phones can ever be read as subtweets at the rest of the Android world. Yes, they have dandy cameras. Merely the characteristic that read loudest to me this year was Google's Titan security model. Google is saying, through these Pixels, that information technology takes security very seriously, and that other Android manufacturers must exercise the aforementioned. Remember how hard Apple is slamming Google on security and privacy issues right at present?

In the Pixels, Google is also trying to set the record straight on "AI," a term that is being roundly abused past diverse phone companies as a trendy way to ready camera modes. With features like Google Duplex, Google is saying that AI really needs massively powerful cloud intelligence—which Google has and companies like Samsung and LG practice not—and so fall in line, guys, and remember y'all need Google.

What About Microsoft? What Almost HTC?

At present, you could enquire, and you probably should—what about Microsoft? It seems to be aggressively "competing" against its Windows Os partners with its Surface lineup, and Dell and Asus don't seem too bothered.

The history of the PC landscape is very different from mobile. The idea of "competing against your platform provider" is broiled into the PC marketplace from the days of the first "IBM compatibles" in 1982. And unlike with AmazonDroid or ChinaDroid, there's never been a viable, licensable alternative to Windows for many desktop uses. Companies tried and failed with Linux for years, and Chrome Bone just doesn't have the professional application base. PC manufacturers are simultaneously more dependent on Microsoft than phone makers are on Google, and more confident that they can compete.

So why did Google spend so much money buying a big chunk of HTC? Honestly, that perplexes me too. I can only recollect that Google's $1.1 billion purchase of HTC's design squad is really more than about not-phone devices like the Pixel Slate, Pixel Hub, and Chromecast. Amazon really stole a march from Google with its Alexa products, and Google has been hustling to catch up. I retrieve it'south caught up, but it doesn't want to be caught out over again.

And remember: 5G is coming. 5G will upend the mobile market and create categories of products we don't expect still. Google, certainly, wants to lead in that location. Rather than killing its partnerships for the defining production of the 2022s, I'd like to call up that Google is preparing, hard, for the 2022s.