I would think the opposite, since Google is not used to selling physical products and they've managed to botch every previous Nexus launch in some way.
Whether or not they have world-class supply chain, fulfillment, and retailing people is far from sure - in fact evidence suggests they do not.
Heck, up until not so long ago, Google didn't even have a very good design team.
Google's competencies are surprisingly narrow.
Having worked at Amazon before I'll say this: retailing is really, really hard, and it takes a lot more than being smart. It takes years of experience. People who try to go toe to toe with Amazon don't often realize this.
(disclaimer: i am a search engineer at Google)
Every interaction I've had with buying physical goods from Play was far more painful than my average online buying experience, even when buying items that are readily available. Once you place a Play order for hardware it basically goes into a black hole where you're never quite sure if the order was actually processed or not and you usually get no indication from Google of the actual status until after the device arrives at your doorstop. Attempts to get information about the order results in robo-emails that manage to appear even stupider than your average "reading from a script" custom service drone. If you keep replying to these robo-emails, sometimes a real person will email you like 2 days later, but not always. Using the phone is nearly as bad, the whole system is clearly designed to stop your from ever talking to a real human, and while I understand the cost reasons for doing this, as a customer it totally sucks, especially compared to companies like Amazon and Newegg who totally nail this stuff (IME).
Play customer service is just busted from top to bottom and woe unto anyone for whom the default process doesn't operate as expected the first time. I love Google for many things but I hate buying hardware from them.
How long do we give Google the benefit of the doubt? How long do we let them off the hook? This isn't their first phone or device launch.
They know how to sell product by now.
edit: I mean, they said 'Sold Out', then after a few hours apparently they allowed more people to buy. I wonder if anyone is getting a phone within the original time span, or if they're buying time at this point.
While I didn't buy a Nexus 4 I did buy a Nexus 10 and it was plagued with the same ordering issues. I spent over 40 minutes refreshing the page to try to get my order in. Much of the time it just reverted to the "Coming Soon"; even when I got it added to the cart it kept failing over and over when trying to confirm the transaction. Yet my tablet was shipped today.
I think it's telling that now wallet.google.com is talking about "building a smarter wallet." I think they've realized they really screwed up. It would be nice though for them to just come out and say it and apologize for the really horrible buying experience. Especially for those Nexus 4 buyers that now have to wait after already being charged.
Something that ought to stop is folks blaming the buyers without realizing that having to refresh the page 20-50 times was the only way to get an order through for many if not most people.
You'd think a company like Google would have a better system for 1. Preordering and 2. Giving a better estimate for when you'll actually receive your product.