Google Canceled Its Own Smartwatch In 2016, Report Claims

Google has been releasing Pixel smartphones for a few years now, but interestingly, unlike rivals Apple and Samsung, the Alphabet-owned tech giant hasn’t released Pixel smartwatches that will go with the smartphones. A report said it almost did but decided not to.

Business Insider talked to six people who formerly worked for Google and found out that the tech giant was actually working on Pixel-branded smartwatches and was supposed to announce it alongside the Pixel smartphones in 2016. Google hardware lead Rick Osterloh, however, decided to cancel the project before the smartphones were unveiled.

According to an employee who worked on the Pixel-branded smartwatch, Google said the smartwatches “didn’t look like what belonged in the Pixel family.” The watches, which were made by LG, didn’t have the design Osterloh wanted for the Pixel brand.

Former employees added that aside from that, the Pixel watches also had problems syncing with the Pixel smartphones. They said the syncing process between the smartphone and the wearable “didn’t work that great.”

Rather than being seen as an integral part of the Pixel ecosystem, the Pixel-branded watches were seen as something that might “bring down the name of the Google hardware brand.” The watches were reportedly closer to the Nexus devices LG made than they are to the Pixel smartphones.

These reasons are likely to make anyone think that the Pixel-branded watches really are bad, but they’re not. The BI report revealed that Google simply didn’t want its name placed on the LG-manufactured watches. Eventually, LG worked on the watches and released them as the LG Watch Style and LG Watch Sport.

Will there be a Pixel watch?

This report then begs the question: is Google planning on releasing a Pixel-branded smartwatch in the future? The answer remains unclear at the moment.

Google recently acquired some “secret smartwatch technology” from watch maker Fossil for a whopping $40 million, The Verge reported. This acquisition, according to a report from Wareable, is for a hybrid smartwatch technology known as “Diana,” which is a combination of the “digital” and “analogue.”

This watch technology combines traditional watch hands (analogue) with digital features like displays and complications. Whether this new technology results in Google releasing a Pixel smartwatch in the future remains unknown at the moment. What’s known is that Fossil has three hybrid wearables called “Fossil Collider DIANA Smartwatch” available for preorder now.