Google Quietly Discontinues Pixel Tablet

As multiple publications have confirmed, Google quietly removed the Pixel Tablet from the Google Store website this week. And though there’s no official word from Google, the device is over three years old and was never updated with a new model, and so it has almost certainly been discontinued.

Google announced the Pixel Tablet in May 2023 alongside the Pixel 7a and Pixel Fold smartphones and released it a month later. But with its curious positioning as a hybrid smart home display–it was initially bundled with a speaker dock–with a non-ideal 16:9 aspect ratio screen, it never found much of an audience. And after planning a second generation model, Google cancelled that project and never issued another update.

This news is interesting timing for me. Literally yesterday, I was browsing the Google Store website and noticed that I had configured a notification so it would alert me when the Pixel Tablet was back in stock: We use one in Mexico City as a smart display, and it works well in that capacity, and I wanted to get one for Pennsylvania as the smart display we use there is out of support and has a smaller screen. And let’s face it, Google hasn’t updated its standalone smart displays in several years. Regardless, I had a feeling that notification was never coming, so I finally cancelled it, though I hadn’t noticed that the Pixel Tablet listing in the store was gone.

But it is. And while I feel like the product deserved a few more revisions, and would have been better served by a 16:10 or 4:3 display and other improvements, it’s likely that the strategy shift tied to Googlebook may have played a role. Ah well.