Tech giant Google extended its nationwide expansion to San Diego, stepping up its brick-and-mortar competition with some of its biggest rivals.
The Mountain View, California-based search engine provider and device maker opened its 10th U.S. retail store, designed to showcase its Pixel phones, Fitbit watches and Nest smart-home devices. It's located at Fashion Valley, San Diego’s largest regional mall.
Also known for its artificial intelligence platform Gemini, Google began opening retail stores in June 2021, with the first debuting in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.
Others have since opened in Brooklyn, New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Miami; Austin, Texas; as well as Oakbrook, Illinois, in suburban Chicago, and in Santa Monica, California, near Los Angeles. There is also one in Google’s corporate home city in Silicon Valley.
Similar in format to stores of rivals Apple and Meta, along with those of numerous wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T, the retail spaces are designed to let customers test out Google’s products. Customers can consult with store employees at service desks to troubleshoot device issues, obtain repairs or trade in older devices for recycling.
“The idea behind Google stores is to showcase their products and devices and to get consumers to buy into them and the wider Google ecosystem,” Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at consulting firm GlobalData, told CoStar News. “The stores themselves look good and have great service, and they are good for education and discovery.”
Mall owner Simon Property Group confirmed that a Google store spanning just under 4,000 square feet opened last week.
Competing with rivals
Saunders noted, however, that the company has not been in a rush to compete with rival Apple when it comes to expanding its retail real estate. Apple began opening stores in 2001 and now operates more than 500 worldwide.
The iPhone maker's stores have long been among the retail industry’s most lucrative based on average sales per square foot, topping $5,500 in 2017, the last year Apple reported that metric.
“Google has been cautious with stores as they don’t have the pulling power of Apple and the interest from consumers is much narrower,” Saunders said in an email.
Google did not respond to multiple email requests from CoStar News to comment on matters including its plans for stores. Ahead of its first opening in 2021, Google said its stores were being developed to let customers view how its products and services work in “a variety of immersive ways.”
Prior to the 2025 opening of its store in D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood, its sixth U.S. location, the store's landlord EastBanc said Google’s arrival “solidifies the neighborhood’s reputation as a premier hub for innovative shopping experiences.”
Executives of parent firm Alphabet generally focus their public statements on Google services like AI. Google’s relatively slow roll-out of stores — 10 locations in five years — reflects a general slowdown in the industry's physical store growth as tech hardware sales have steadily moved online.
The opening of the retail real estate comes as Google has shed some office space while opening other sites, such as its new campus in San Jose, California.
Store closings
Other companies have shut retail space. Even Apple recently announced the closing of three locations in U.S. malls that it said were underperforming, and most of its tech rivals have been unable to attain satisfactory results on a long-term basis in brick-and-mortar settings.
Amazon started opening physical stores in 2015 but by early 2022 had closed all 68 remaining U.S. stores that sold tech devices, including Amazon Books and pop-up locations.
Microsoft began opening stores in 2009 but in June 2020 announced the closing of all 83 if its retail stores worldwide, though it has since retained two consumer retail showrooms — one in New York City and one at its campus in Redmond, Washington.
Facebook parent Meta maintains retail locations in places such as New York and Los Angeles that spotlight its technologies like smart glasses, but it has been cutting back on its investments in virtual reality since March. As of April, Meta operated five U.S. retail locations known as Meta Labs.
Also, electronics retailer Best Buy has closed more than 100 stores since 2020 as it shifts more toward online sales and smaller-format locations.