Google is only just now wading into the manufacturing business. Up to this point, Google has been a product sold inside other products: a software service for email, mobile operating systems, search and so forth.
So why are they opening up a retail store in Dublin?
Either Google has quite a few more products up its sleeve, or the company plans to sell third-party hardware alongside its own hardware. That means mobile phones running the Android OS, Google's smart TVs, and Chromebooks, among other products.
This sounds like a direct attempt to compete with Apple stores, the planned Amazon retail outlets, and Microsoft which has its own retail chain.
And it's sort of bizarre. After all, retail is not a great business to be in. Lots of companies have closed up shop in recent years, unable to compete with big online vendors like Amazon.
Retail costs more to operate and has a thin profit margin, unless you can use it as advertising like Apple does.
So maybe that's the point. Google could sell all its products from an online perch, but maybe having physical, brick-and-mortar shops will catch more media attention and capture the imagination of shoppers everywhere.
Call me a skeptic. Then again, I find Google's entrance into hardware manufacturing a very odd decision as well. Why not focus on developing Google+ and improving Android for tablets and mobile phones? Why not double down on Chrome OS?
Maybe it's too early to tell, but this seems like yet another in a long string of odd decisions from the search giant which, to be fair, is much more than a search giant now. Unless Google really does plan to go full steam ahead with its gear division, a store strikes me as little more than a publicity stunt.
