Don’t give Google too much credit for candor, however. As was made clear by hardware chief Rick Osterloh in a tweet, the openness was motivated by a need to assuage other manufacturers that are still making tablets with Android or ChromeOS.
I am not sure I would be comforted if I were a tablet manufacturer, though. The problems that have plagued Google’s own devices involved some self-inflicted hardware wounds, sure, but they were mere scrapes compared to what has been going on with Google’s tablet software and ecosystem.