Andy Rubin says Google ‘has no plans’ for retail stores

Google’s Andy Rubin says that the company is not planning to open retail stores. AllThingsD quotes Rubin at a recent roundtable discussion denying rumors that the company is planning to open physical stores for its products. According to previous reports, Google’s planned retail stores would open sometime this year. “Google has no plans and we have nothing to announce,” Rubin said. The quote was couched in a larger discussion of whether Google’s mobile devices would benefit from a bigger offline sales presence. Rubin argued that word of mouth and online reviews had made physical storefronts less of a requirement. “For Nexus, I don’t think the program is far enough along to think about the necessity of having these things in a retail store.”