The first phone made by Google inside and out
On 4 October 2016, at an event in San Francisco held under the line Made by Google, Google introduced the Pixel.1, 2, 3 The phone came in two sizes, five and five and a half inches, ran Android 7.1, and was priced from 649 US dollars, level with the iPhone it was measured against.1, 2 Google sold it unlocked through its own store and, in the United States, through an exclusive retail partnership with Verizon.1 The company described it as the first phone made by Google inside and out.1
Google had put its name on phones before. The Nexus line, launched in 2010, consisted of reference devices built with partners whose names stayed on the hardware, intended to show manufacturers and developers what Android should look like rather than to sell in volume.1, 3 The Pixel ended that arrangement. HTC assembled the first generation, but its name appeared nowhere on the device or in the marketing.3 The back panel carried a single G, and the Nexus programme was retired.3, 4
A hardware division with a mandate
The launch was the first public result of a structural decision. In April 2016, some eight months after the Alphabet restructuring of August 2015 separated Google's core business from its long-range projects, the company brought its scattered hardware efforts under a single division led by Rick Osterloh, the former president of Motorola.5, 6 The mandate was to design hardware and software together, the way the companies Google competed with had always done.6
Android, which Google had acquired in 2005, had given the company the world's largest mobile platform, but the platform reached consumers wrapped in other companies' interfaces and other companies' names. The Pixel gave Google ownership of the whole experience for the first time, and the software made the case for it: the Pixel was the first phone with the Google Assistant built in, and Google presented its camera as the highest rated smartphone camera it had ever shipped, backed by free unlimited storage for original quality photos in Google Photos.1
Moving brand equity from software to objects
The launch campaign, developed by Droga5 and rolled out across six markets, addressed the central brand problem directly: people knew Google as a place to type, not as a thing to hold.7 Its key visual device was the search bar itself, stretched into the outline of a phone, so that the most recognized interface element the company owned became the silhouette of the new product.7
"Make people know and love us for our hardware, starting with phones, the same way they know and love us for search, email, maps, and more."7
The line, from Adrienne Hayes, Google's vice president of marketing for mobile and wearable products, described a transfer of brand equity (the commercial value derived from brand recognition) from services to objects.7 The pricing carried the same message. Nexus devices had often undercut the market; the Pixel matched Apple at the top of it, which told buyers what category Google believed it now belonged in.
A name with room to grow
The name was not new. Google had used Pixel since 2013 for the Chromebook Pixel and later the Pixel C tablet, reserving it for the small number of devices the company designed itself.8 Promoting that mark to the flagship phone turned an internal signal into a consumer brand. Even the colour names, Quite Black, Very Silver and Really Blue, spoke in the self-aware tone Google used for its services, a signal that the brand voice was moving onto hardware unchanged.1
What followed confirmed the intent. Pixel became the umbrella for earbuds, watches, tablets and folding phones, and the vehicle for the camera software and AI features that came to define how Google presents itself as a maker of products.8 Later generations moved to Google's own Tensor chips, completing the inside and out claim the first model had made ahead of its ability to fully deliver it.8
The Pixel did not win significant market share in its first years, and it did not need to. Its work was positional: it moved Google from endorsing other makers' phones to selling its own name, and it gave the company a branded object to point at when it wanted to show what its software was for. The Nexus had been Google's answer to what an Android phone should be. The Pixel answered a different question, what a Google phone was, and the company has been answering it the same way since.
Source: Google Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. Google, Brian Rakowski, VP, Product Management, "Introducing Pixel, our new phone made by Google", 4 October 2016, for Google introducing the Pixel on 4 October 2016, for the two sizes of 5 and 5.5 inches, for Android 7.1 Nougat, for the price "starting at $649" in the U.S., for sale unlocked on the Google Store and the exclusive U.S. partnership with Verizon, for the words "Pixel is the first phone made by Google inside and out", for Google having "partnered closely with mobile handset partners around the world" since 2010 and, "Through Nexus", having set out "to work with these various partners to push the boundaries of what's possible with a smartphone", for the Pixel as "the first phone with the Google Assistant built in", for the camera claim, which the post words more strongly than the body as "not only the best smartphone camera we've ever made, it's the highest rated smartphone camera anyone has ever made", backed by a DxOMark Mobile score of 89, for "free unlimited storage for original quality photos and videos at full resolution in Google Photos", and for the colour names Very Silver, Quite Black and Really Blue, the last a limited edition for the U.S. only. The post does not name HTC and compares the price with no other phone. https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-our-new-phone-made-google/
2. TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey, "Everything you need to know from Google's Pixel event", 4 October 2016, for the event having been held in San Francisco on 4 October 2016, for the phones starting at $649, for Google calling them "the first phones designed by Google inside and out", and for the iPhone as the phone the Pixel was measured against, its camera having "scored higher than even the mighty iPhone 7 in DxOMark's labs". The piece does not give the iPhone's price, so the parity of price in the body rests on no source here. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/04/everything-you-need-to-know-from-googles-pixel-event/
3. Wikipedia, "Pixel (1st generation)", for the phones having been announced on 4 October 2016 at the Made by Google event, for the Pixel having been designed, developed and marketed by Google as the successor to the Nexus line of smartphones, for Google having previously co-developed flagship Android devices with manufacturers through the Nexus program, for HTC as manufacturer, working with Google "on a contract basis on development", for Google having refused to "dual-brand the phone with credit to the manufacturer" when it first offered the contract to Huawei, and for a Google spokesperson stating that there were "no plans" to make another Nexus device. The article does not state in terms that HTC's name was absent from the marketing, and it does not describe the Nexus devices as reference designs not meant to sell in volume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_(1st_generation)
4. TechCrunch, Brian Heater, "Here's the Google Pixel", 4 October 2016, for the back of the phone, a combination of glass and metal with a fingerprint reader, an antenna band and "Google's new "G" logo along the bottom". https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/04/google-pixel/
5. TechCrunch, Stefan Etienne, "Google places Rick Osterloh in charge of new, unified hardware division", 28 April 2016, for Google having unified "all of its product lines under one roof, with one leader to boot" in April 2016, for the division taking in the Nexus program, Chromecast, the Pixel line, OnHub routers, ATAP and Google Glass, and for Osterloh having left his head position at Motorola the month before. The piece calls him "the former CEO of Motorola" and does not use the title president. https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/28/google-places-rick-osterloh-in-charge-of-new-unified-hardware-division/
6. Fast Company, Harry McCracken, "Three years in, Google's hardware honcho is just getting started", 3 May 2019, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for Osterloh having marked his third anniversary in charge of Google's device business on 18 April 2019, which dates his appointment to April 2016, for the company having "formed a single hardware group and put him in charge", for the Alphabet restructuring of August 2015, when Larry Page "broke out non-core businesses into arms of a new holding company called Alphabet", and for Osterloh's own account of the division's approach as "the co-design of hardware and software". The dates in the piece put some eight months between the restructuring and the appointment, the interval the body gives. https://www.fastcompany.com/90343434/three-years-in-googles-hardware-honcho-is-just-getting-started
7. Fast Company, Jeff Beer, "How Google's Pixel Campaign Aims To Bring Its Brand Reputation To Hardware", 23 November 2016, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the campaign by Droga5, for its having "launched in six very different markets", which the piece does not name, for the blank search bar that "slowly it morphs into a different type of rectangle, one distinctly smartphone-shaped", and for Adrienne Hayes, "Google's VP of marketing for mobile and wearable products", and her words, given there as the brief to the agency, to "make people know and love us for our hardware, starting with phones, the same way they know and love us for search, email, maps, and more." https://www.fastcompany.com/3065945/how-googles-pixel-campaign-aims-to-bring-its-brand-reputation-to-hardware
8. Wikipedia, "Google Pixel", for the first Chromebook Pixel, announced on 21 February 2013, and the Pixel C tablet, announced on 29 September 2015, for the Pixel smartphones having been produced since October 2016 as the replacement for the Nexus line, for the later members of the family, the Pixel Buds earbuds unveiled in October 2017, the Pixel Watch released in October 2022, the Pixel Tablet and the Pixel Fold announced on 10 May 2023, and for the Google Tensor processor in the Pixel 6 generation. The article does not say that the name was reserved for devices Google designed itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pixel
