I have a lot of Google products, so I am excited to see this initiative
Wow it's been a long time coming, but Google's finally going after Apple's store concept. The store will steal a few of Apple's ideas, by showcasing their products and offering support like the genius bar. Unlike its pop-up stores and temporary gigs, this marks a more serious attempt at tackling a permanent physical store idea.
Of course, the tech giant is more known for its search engine and online presence so this will be a first of its kind.
It's almost ironic that many of the big software giants of today are going after physical stores since many see brick and mortar as a dying subset of the market. However, companies like Amazon and Google have seen how opening specific physical stores can actually help their business model.
Google has been racking up hardware products for a while now
For decades, Google has focused on an online business and their acquisitions reflected this. The most famous one would be Youtube back in the early 2000s and was one of their more successful subsidiaries they acquired.
Many might not know this, but the majority of Google's revenue comes from ad spend from its network, which makes up more than 90% of its revenue.
This is a reason why Google has looked for ways to expand their products, especially into new markets. They've been known as the tech giant to experiment, and if you're interested to see what Google has built and shut down, you can check out Google Graveyard.
Recently, Google has expanded into every market you could think of, either by building their own products or acquiring others. Of course, we know about Google Pixel, but it recently acquired a part of Fossil and acquired the entire business of Fitbit to increase their smartwatch footprint. They have even gone after smart home security systems with its acquisition of Nest (to go against Amazon's Ring).
It has been doing this in the last decade to help build its physical product footprint. Amazon has done its fair share of acquisitions as well so this has been a war of the tech giants.
Of course, if the Chelsea store works, we will most likely see Google pursue a larger expansion. With COVID-19, the real estate industry has taken a beating and it has become much cheaper to rent space so it seems like Google has pounced on an opportunity around this.
I have my fair share of Google products - here are my thoughts
Personally, I have used the Google Pixel 1 to 3, the Chromebook, Google Home (the first one), and the Google Daydream Headset (which has since been discontinued).
In my opinion, Google products have one redeeming feature, and that is its product design. Even with early reiterations of Google products (I've always been an early adopter), every design of the product has been super eye catching and you can tell Google want people to appreciate how nice the design were for the products.
One of the major problems, however, that I've found in every Google product is either a lack of features or the number of bugs. Gogole Chromebooks were, in my opinion, a poor excuse for a laptop and the early Pixel models had a tonne of issues.
This makes, in my opinion, Google's physical product plays solid but also weak. Although this might be worry-some for others, I personally enjoy seeing the grit Google has to take on this space against companies that have decades of experience above them.
I am super excited to see how this store will span out, and hopefully, it will breathe in new life for Google's physical product lineup. In my opinion, this is an idea that will work quite well as I believe Google will be able to execute on this concept as it improves on its physical product line.