On this week’s episode of The Chrome Cast, we finally had a chance to sit down and digest some of the awesome announcements that came out of Google’s 2021 I/O developer conference. There weren’t a lot of consumer-facing products unveiled but the list of new software and platform features is a long one and we’ll be breaking those down, piece by piece, over the next few days. There are a ton of new features coming to Chrome OS, the web, Google Assistant, and more but today, I want to talk about wearables.
Wear OS, now simply Wear, has lived a rough life and there were times that it really felt as if Google was going to abandon the wearable platform altogether despite stating an ongoing commitment to OS. Then, Google slid in and acquired Fitbit that seemed a bit odd at first but it stirred hope that Wear could finally find its place in the world with the backing of Fitbit’s industry-leading products and ingenuity. While it may be a while before we see the full evolution of the Google and Fitbit relationship, I/O brought another interesting bit of information that could be the shot in the arm that the Wear platform desperately needs.
