Huh, they made TPUs ...

Also, making silicon is closer to making software than you might think.

Except when your mistakes stay etched in silicon forever. The software industry is by now very deep in the fail fast and fail often. Maybe the hardware industry is taking a page from that book too but they’re many, many chapters apart.

For Google scale companies the difference between hardware and software is less than you would think.

I’m thinking of a really big difference so “less than I think” is probably still a lot. I’m sure time will show it one way or another. So far their phones for example were plagued by hardware issues. Maybe they’re just finding their footing but the point stands, hardware mistakes are forever and Google is 90% a software company with the appropriate mentality.

The only times I heard about Google being good at hardware were “trust me” anecdotal and unverifiable stories about DC equipment. At best this says Google cares about the HW they use not the HW they sell to an end user.

What sort of hardware issues?

I've had the Pixel 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6a and 8 Pro and each has been excellent. I've had no hardware problems with any of them.

I have a Pixel 8 Pro, which is fine, except the GPS takes a very long time to wake up. It is running GrapheneOS, however.

Mine's pretty quick, using the stock OS. I assume in your case it's doing a cold start with no AGPS assistance? If so, it'll take up to a couple of minutes to acquire a fix.

I have no idea, tbh. I just open Google Maps, and it usually takes a few minutes to get a reading. This used to be on the order of seconds on my old (Android) phone.

Are you telling me the tensor backslash was all internet drama ?

Google themselves acknowledged their phone have issue in leaked document.

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g6-downgrades...

Beside this recent issue with tensor, everyone know that pixel phone don't hold up. They always break one way or another, which was barely acceptable when they were cheap.

Your collection of pixel either say you got many defect or you switched so frequently you didn't have time to see them appear.

Sigh... you seem to have a very short memory

When apple had antenngate, they first went on a big campaign of denying the issue, then claiming other companies were affected as well and finally claiming you are holding it wrong.

Google has a lot of issues too, but let's not kid ourselves about Apple.

I don’t think lack of hardware expertise is the problem. The biggest issue is that Google leadership does not seem capable of thinking long or even medium term. Waymo, Glass, and the myriad of discontinued software products are a proof of it.

How is Waymo proof that they're incapable of thinking long term? They've been funding it since 2009, and are only now just getting to market in 2024. They are plenty of examples where Google's failed to think long term, but I have a hard time seeing Waymo as one of them. Waymo is operational in several cities in the US so it doesn't seem like Google's about to cancel it and they raised another 6.5 billion earlier this year.

Is there anything remotely competitive for Waymo? GM noped out of the self driving market after embarrassing themselves, and Tesla is still dying on the "we don't need no stinking lidar" hill.