After years of flirting with the idea of opening a physical store, Google announced its first-ever permanent retail location last month. Today, June 1

Here’s what’s inside Google’s first-ever retail store

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2021-06-18 17:30:12

After years of flirting with the idea of opening a physical store, Google announced its first-ever permanent retail location last month. Today, June 17, is the official grand opening, and Google celebrated with a blog post detailing what the store is like.

Officially, this is "The Google Store Chelsea," and it lives in New York City on 15th and 9th, aka the Chelsea Market building, aka the headquarters of Google's New York City campus. Unlike the stark white Apple Stores that Google is chasing after, the Google Store has a natural look, with warm wood walls and furniture. Whimsical bendy rods shoot out of the floor and decorate the store, looking like a giant version of a bead maze from a pediatrician's office. The store was designed by Ivy Ross, Google’s VP of hardware design.

"Sandbox" areas for Pixel, Stadia, and Nest will pitch customers on the benefits of each product line. The Pixel area shows off the phone's camera technology with various lighting effects; the Stadia area is one of the only places the public can actually try the game streaming service; and the Nest section is a big living room full of smart home devices. A "workshop" space will host regular events and lessons. There's also a rotating exhibit called the "Google Imagination Space," a "17-foot-tall circular glass structure" that surrounds a visitor with several vertical screens. Right now, it's pitching Google Translate, and visitors can "experience real-time translation of your speech into 24 languages simultaneously and then learn how this all happens on the back end using several Google technologies."