Google Hardware– The hits keep on coming

Yet another black eye for its floundering hardware business.

• Google has identified 18 zero-day vulnerabilities related to Samsung Exynos modems the four most serious of which would allow a hacker to take over a device simply by knowing its phone number.
• A range of Samsung devices, Vivo devices, the Pixel 6 and 7 and any device that uses the Exynos T5123 chipset are all affected and it is up to the individual device manufacturers to issue and install the patches required.
• Progress on this front has been pretty bad as so far only Google has issued a patch and it is a patch that fixes only one of the four vulnerabilities.
• This was included in the March 2023 security update meaning that Google’s devices remain exposed to the other three to which the best Google can come up with is to advise users to turn off WiFi and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) calling.
• Google is working as quickly as it can to come up with fixes for the other three serious (and 14 less serious) flaws but this is another sign of just how problematic hardware remains for Google.
• Google is used to a world where the software runs on its servers and users visit the server to execute the service.
• This means that when it needs to be updated, one pushes a button and it’s done.
• This has been a bugbear for Google for years as it has really struggled with the idea that devices using embedded software need to be updated individually and require user consent.
• It has also had great difficulty in getting the hardware right and has suffered from a number of blunders that could have been very easily avoided.
• This one is not necessarily of Google’s making but it could have chosen to go with Qualcomm or MediaTek for the modem neither of which have suffered from this issue as far as I know.
• This incident continues to reinforce my view that Google has no business making hardware just in the same way that Samsung has no business in making software.
• For example, Samsung makes some of the best-looking, well-designed laptops in the market today, but new users have to spend time deleting a series of useless and unwanted Samsung apps from the device after purchase.
• Google’s software on Pixel devices is generally extremely good but almost every year it is the hardware that lets this device series down.
• Consequently, I have long argued that Samsung and Google should collaborate much more closely if they want to come up with a device that can challenge the iPhone.
• Both Google and Samsung seem to think that they can do it on their own but as Apple slowly gains more and more market share, there is no evidence that this strategy is working.
• Furthermore, Google sells low volumes of Pixel devices meaning that the losses that the hardware business racks up every year are not going to be insignificant even for a company of Google’s size.
• In this environment, there is going to be pressure to do something about that red ink although, to be frank, I suspect that the majority of the waste and bloat is within the core search business.
• That is where Google could make real savings and it may need to if it wants to make the case that a generative AI offering for search is going to be so expensive to implement that it will be unable to compete.
• I still don’t like Google’s valuation but if the market panics about Google losing its edge in search to generative AI, then the shares could become very interesting.