Sometimes when you're wildly successful as Google is with Android and Search, you start doing things that don't make a lot of sense.

Microsoft has done this many, many times as has Apple. With Microsoft you can see the ill fated Kin/Kin 2, Windows Media Center, Windows Tablet, Windows UMPC's, etc. that for various reasons just weren't good ideas, weren't priced right, etc. Apple had the G4 cube, iPod Hi-Fi, and the Motorolla ROKR (with iTunes).

When you have billions of dollars in profit, you tend to throw money around at ideas that might not be ready yet, or just might not be very good ideas yet. Google has a history of doing this in software, but now that they're moving into hardware the problems seem more glaring.