Google's forays into hardware and phones have been covered and analyzed elsewhere, and the main takeaway I got is that they tried to do phones with the typical

Google's forays into hardware and phones have been covered and analyzed elsewhere, and the main takeaway I got is that they tried to do phones with the typical Google-ish mindset combining a "build it and they will come" mentality with zero customer support. And it didn't work too well, probably because people have different attitudes to fancy smartphones that cost money than they do to free email. :P