We’ve been hearing a lot about the possibility of Google opening their own Retail Stores recently and I’m sure that a lot of you were pretty excited at the thought of Google having their own stores like Apple has theirs. As with a lot of Android news stories though, this might be one that doesn’t turn out to be true. I hate to say it but, the likelihood of Google opening up their own brick-and-mortar stores is looking pretty slim right about now. The past couple of days has seen a flurry of announcements coming out of Mobile World Congress and while it’s been nowhere near as exciting as it has been in past years, there’s still a little news trickling out. One such trickle of news is the word that Google “has no plans” to open their own retail outlets.
Speaking to journalists at MWC this week, Andy Rubin has killed the hope of retail stores from Google. Speaking to reports in a roundtable, he’s quoted by AllThingsD as having said:
“Google has no plans and we have nothing to announce,”
That’s some pretty definite language but thankfully, he elaborated on the point saying that customers “don’t have to go in the store and feel it anymore,” which is completely true, how many of you based your last gadget purchase based on a hands-on in store? Of course, it depends on how much you’re spending on something but most of our smartphones, tablets etc are bought online, based on reviews – like this one of the Nexus 4 – we’ve read and videos off of YouTube. Speculation was that retail stores would be the perfect place for the Nexus line to be shown off to the public but Mr Rubin thinks the program isn’t ready for that saying, “for Nexus, I don’t think the program is far enough along to think about the necessity of having these things in a retail store.”
Personally, I didn’t see much point in Google opening their own retail stores, if only to compete with Apple. They’re an Internet giant for a reason and let’s face it, if they have enough trouble distributing orders from the Play Store, can you imagine how their stores would be ran? All joking aside, it was an interesting idea that Google could open stores around the country, and even globally but, I question how much they’d benefit from running the stores.