Poor job communicating it? Saying that they had the best rated smartphone camera of all time was one of their main points during their Pixel ad campaign.
Given their history, the next name (due in 2018) shall be "GCloud" or "Cloud by Google".
Yeah.
Such a waste :-(
First, there was the Nexus One by HTC, then Nexus S by Samsung, then Galaxy Nexus by Samsung (how is that different than Galaxy S* series?), a bunch in between that were no less confusing, and now there's a Pixel.
The Nexus branding seems to have been tied to the manufacturer, which only added to my confusion. I just want to know what is the Google sanctioned phone.
So yes, they didn't do a very good job at marketing their brand and setting it apart from the "clones".