You only get so many Hail Mary passes in consumer electronics. Even among the biggest companies. Take a look a Microsoft’s long-standing mobile phone ambitions. Even a $7.2 billion acquisition of the once-dominant Nokia couldn’t buy the company a place at the table with Apple and Samsung.
Some earlier false starts aside, Google’s mobile hardware ambitions have been — on the whole — more successful. But the Pixel line has never had the major hit the company needs to justify the resources spent on the category. The devices have largely felt like, at best, a showcase for some of the cool stuff Google is working on in mobile software and ML and, at …
