GOOGLE'S PIXEL 2 ANNOUNCEMENT

Google is expected to launch a new hardware at a media event in San Francisco this month including a follow-up to last year's Pixel phone.You can watch the whole show right here starting at 9am PDT, 12pm EDT. We will also be liveblogging the whole event, so follow along for commentary and real-time analysis from WIRED's reporters on the scene.

The Pixel 2 is sure to be the biggest news, but we also expect Google to show off a new gadget or two for the smart home, some VR stuff, and probably something wacky that nobody's anticipating. The company has been diving hard into consumer electronics this past year in an effort to reposition itself as a gadget company. Even as Google works with top-name manufacturers like Samsung and Motorola to put its Android operating system on high-end handsets, and as the company pushes its Chrome OS laptop software onto notebooks from Acer and Lenovo that make their way into classrooms and offices, the tech giant is still intent on building its own hardware. So far, it's been successful in making products people like—the Pixel phone, the Google Home smart speaker—but what remains to be seen is if Google can out-innovate its partners in these highly competitive, highly commoditized product categories. To help it make better phones, Google acquired a division of smartphone-maker HTC. We likely won't see any of the fruits of the that deal, which happened just last month, in today's Pixel phone. But we will see where Google's ambitions will likely steer the company in the future.

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