Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers, and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services.
It's buying the HTC engineering team that built the Pixel smartphone for Google in a cash deal, the companies said in a joint statement Thursday. Google is also getting a non-exclusive license for Taiwan-based HTC's intellectual property to help support Pixel phones.
The deal underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people's lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:43PM (4 children)
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16405200/google-clips-camera-ai-photos-video-hands-on-wi-fi-direct [theverge.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 04 2017, @09:58PM (3 children)
Google Clip looks like some sort of sleazy spycam to me.
No thanks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:54AM (2 children)
The article/review touches on this, in fact, and brings up a good point that I'd like to underscore as well.
This is a huge factor: If true, it means that the device is designed to serve its owner (you), not a remote master (Google).
"Nothing happens locally" is what is wrong with 99+% of home/automation technology. "Everything happens locally" is a big part of the antidote.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 05 2017, @08:50PM (1 child)
Until you sync images to Google's cloud, after all the device has 16 GB of storage, what is the user going to do when it fills up?
That's right, sync to Google.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:56PM
My take from the articlereview was that you'd send the clips directly to your phone over wifi (not, for example, to google->then your phone).
If you are determined to sync them to an online service, hey, I won't stand in your way. There is a place for such.