Google is building a hardware empire, and this is what it looks like

Google began the 21st century as a small but growing search engine. 14 years later, the California-based company has built smartphones, mapped the globe, purchased a firm that makes advanced smoke detectors, and obtained a veritable army of robots. It's sometimes tempting to still think of Google as a search engine, but the strides the company has made into a huge range of hardware markets show that Google's search history won't define its future.
At yesterday's Code Conference, co-founder...
Continue reading…