“Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.” Google releases Nexus Q, made entirely in America

Google Tries Something Retro: Made in the U.S.A.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Etched into the base of Google’s wireless Nexus Q home media player, introduced on Wednesday, is its most intriguing feature.

On the underside of the Magic-8-ball-shaped device reads a simple laser-etched inscription: “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.”

It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States. During the last decade, low-cost China labor and looser environmental regulations have virtually erased what was once a vibrant American industry. Since the 1990s, one American company after another, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, have become design and marketing shells, with huge work forces deployed at contract manufacturers in Shenzhen and elsewhere in China.

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Google’s Q links a TV or home sound system to the Internet cloud in order to play video and audio content downloaded from the Internet. The engineers who led the effort to build the device, which is based on the same microprocessor that is found in Android smartphones, and which contains seven printed circuit boards, said they had been able to almost completely source components from manufacturers in the United States.

Google was able to find a company to make the metal base in the Midwest and another supplier for the molded plastic components like the case in Southern California. Semiconductor chips are more of a challenge. In some cases, the chips are made in the United States, but then shipped to Asia to be packaged with other electronic components.

Google did not take the easy route and encase the Q in a black box. The dome of the ball-shaped case is the volume control — you twist it — a feature that required painstaking engineering and a prolonged hunt for just the right bearing, said Matt Hershenson, an engineer, who is a member of an a small team of consumer product designers who have worked together at companies such as Apple, General Magic, Phillips N.V., Web-TV and now Google.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-others-give-manufacturing-in-the-us-a-try.html?pagewanted=all