Q&A with Sundar Pichai and Rick Osterloh on their ambitions with Pixel 6, Tensor SoC, Google hardware, and the Android ecosystem at large
The VergeDieter Bohn
Context & Ripple Effects
This Q&A is the strategy conversation on top of a four-year build-out. Osterloh's 2017 interview on the HTC acquisition framed the deal as a way to integrate software and hardware; the Pixel 6 unveiling then showed the first fruit — a Google-designed Tensor SoC in both Pixel 6 models. Pichai and Osterloh are now explaining why owning the silicon matters.
The arc runs forward, not just backward: Osterloh revisited the integration thesis in a 2024 Q&A on Pixel devices and AI smartphones, and Pichai's 2026 Q&A on Google's place in the AI race shows the same executives still defending Google's position — making this 2021 conversation the origin point for the AI-hardware argument they have been making since.
First-order effects
Pixel 6 becomes the first Android phone built around Google's own Tensor SoC — with two big ARM Cortex-X1 cores per the Ars Technica breakdown — letting Google ship features like real-time translation and live captions that Osterloh demoed in August, features other Android OEMs cannot match on off-the-shelf chips.
Second-order effects
Designing its own SoC puts Google's Pixel line in direct competition with the Samsung Galaxy tier of Android while loosening Google's dependence on the merchant chip vendors that supply the rest of the ecosystem — a differentiation play that pressures rival Android OEMs to answer with their own custom silicon.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, Google's hardware business stops being a reference-device exercise and becomes a vertically integrated AI platform — the through-line from the HTC deal to Tensor to the AI-smartphone framing in Osterloh's later interviews — with the Android ecosystem splitting between Google's integrated stack and everyone else.
The trend: Google's hardware strategy has shifted from Nexus-style reference devices toward vertically integrated, AI-first products built on its own silicon — the thesis this Q&A crystallizes.
@JuddLegum I think smartphones are just a really mature platform right now, waiting for the next innovation. Feels like how laptops were before Apple came out with the M1 chips
'Mobile chips simply haven't been able to keep pace with Google research, and rather than wait for them to catch up, we decided to make one ourselves.' Driving the knife deeper into Qualcomm's chest.
@CaseyNewton I feel like these tech events were genuinely exciting for a few months around 2007 or whenever they intro'd the iPhone and now it's a dozen years later and people are still covering all these product launches even though there is absolutely no news
Boom! Google Tensor Chips have afforded the company with a massive lead in #VoiceFirst technology. The non-cloud, on device recognition models are spectacular. I own a Google phone just for this feature and will buy Pixel 6, just for this feature. Apple has failed to keep up. htt…
Google: “The new chip unlocks new capabilities, so we upgraded the cameras” Apple: “The new cameras unlock capabilities only made possible by the new chip” See how Apple manages to praise both, and makes the cameras also seem like new & innovative technology?
@JoannaStern Every year I want to believe them but then every year they totally repudiate the previous year's version. They still have no clear direction between CFO wanting an iPhone money maker, Engineering wanting a dog-food machine, and PM not paying attention until ship time…
Every time I watch a Google or Microsoft product event, I'm reminded of how awesome Apple is at this. Everyone else's stuff feels like an infomercial and I end up turning off. Apple is just better, sharper, pithier.
Right now everyone in my feed is tweeting about the Pixel. This happens every year. And every year no one really buys these phones. They buy Apple and Samsung. This year Google says NO MORE. It's ready: https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/...
I also asked about some of the anti-trust issues facing Google and Android. Pichai says that Google Play is the “main source of revenue” for Android. That's not typically how many think of how Android makes money for Google. https://twitter.com/...
Osterloh and Pichai are not shy about wanting this year's Pixel to be the breakout, going so far as to admit that they haven't been super ambitious the last coupe years in the buildup to this phone.
I sat down with Sundar Pichai and Rick Osterloh to talk about their ambitions with the Pixel 6, Tensor, Google hardware, and the Android ecosystem at large. It's up in the Vergecast feed and on our website: https://www.theverge.com/...