Google Goes Glam With Moto X
Brian Wallace was beaming when he stepped into a Motorola conference room on June 17. The company’s VP-global brand and product marketing had just received word about the latest breakthrough for Moto X, the first smartphone Motorola developed since it was bought by Google last May for $12.5 billion.
But his excitement wasn’t over some revolutionary functionality. Rather, he had learned Moto X’s line of customizable backs would now include four kinds of real wood at launch. Issues with the wood backs interfering with phones’ antennae had apparently been resolved.
It’s out of character for Google to be so excited about a product whose allure is almost entirely aesthetic. Google has a reputation for aggressively pursuing the future of technology, costs be damned. It developed a self-driving car despite there being no immediate market for one. No one knows what its plans are for Google Glass. The company is fine creating things and waiting as long it takes for the rest of the world to catch up.
