In many ways -- like the tablet -- this idea was painfully obvious. Mobile processors are getting better and faster and less battery hungry. Display technology

In many ways -- like the tablet -- this idea was painfully obvious. Mobile processors are getting better and faster and less battery hungry. Display technology of all sorts are getting better. Battery technology is getting better. When we're on the go there is already a movement to try to surrogate our smartphone with smart watches, and this is simply the next step of that process. Assuming that it really was completely out of left field, however, Google is not a consumer products company. They are an information services company that has, thus far, only been able to heavily monetize advertisements (though it's foolhardy for anyone who can only ever see ads as where they want to be). If Google spurred on 1000 competitors all creating such devices, Google would be there and ready to provide the information side of the equation. And Google might have decided to make a big splash early not to make a landgrab, but rather to be in the obnoxious situation in the future where they come out with the obvious evolution of a product later than someone else makes an announcement, and gets declared a copycat.