“Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote last week. “For us, technology is not about the devices or the products we build. Those aren’t the end goals.” This came just days before Google hired back the former president of Motorola Mobility, Rick Osterloh, to head up its hardware efforts. Pichai was writing the annual founders’ letter to shareholders, usually penned by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who now head up the parent group Alphabet. The letter is, of course, designed to describe a big-picture vision, not detailed tactics, but its tone still seemed at odds with the appointment of Osterloh,…