And don't they have Brillo? Having this without Brillo duplicates (particularly security related) effort and signals that Google doesn't consider Brillo to be acceptable for use in its own products.
I imagine going w/ Brillo would have set back the release schedule, but Brillo, if their vision for both products were to come to pass, is by far the more consequential product. Also... The wireless router market isn't exactly teaming with competitive one-upsmanship. They could have waited 0.5-2+ years without losing significant ground.
Note: Brillo is the stripped down variant of Android aimed at IoT (internet of things) devices that Google announced at the last Google I/O. This is an ideal early device for Brillo, since it's relatively powerful and isn't battery powered, so constraints aren't quite as high as they are in many IoT devices, yet it shares much of the problem space.
Well, if that's the case then that's good. I had a line originally that had a parenthetical like "(or if they are using it, they should be announcing so with much fanfare, at least in the technical sections of the page)", but it got cut due to how cumbersome it made the sentence.
Thanks for the heads up. I genuinely hope that are using Brillo and using the experience to improve the OS. I think that Google is biting off a LOT with Brillo, and I don't think that they can afford to fragment their IoT efforts.
Fair point, but the carriers deserve a lot of the blame for old versions of Android on those phones. Google is likely to keep software on their own routers up to date. At least until they lose interest in the product line entirely.
Smartphones have a very different upgrade cycle than a SOHO router. Customers have been trained to upgrade their phone every two years by the cell phone carriers.
Given the substantial drop-off in build quality that I've seen over the years since the first G routers until maybe _very_ recently, I'm not so sure about this statement.
I've got v1-4 WRT54Gs that are still going strong while I've seen several dozen newer routers shit themselves over the years.
Also, why do we NEED to upgrade phones every 2 years?
>Given the substantial drop-off in build quality that I've seen over the years since the first G routers until maybe _very_ recently, I'm not so sure about this statement.
This is just another reason for more competition from a company like google.
The only reason most people know their router exist is because they have to turn it off and on when their wifi gets slow or it dies. Its not a status symbol like an iphone for example.
>Also, why do we NEED to upgrade phones every 2 years?
Because everyone wants the new hotness. Can you imagine trying to use the first iphone in 2015?
