Google forgot to remove Stadia references from Nest Wifi Pro listings

Kyle Bradshaw | Oct 4 2022 - 9:02 am PT

Two people holding Stadia Controllers with a Nest Wifi Pro in the background

With the announcement of the Nest Wifi Pro today, it seems the Google Store didn’t take the time to remove all of the references to Stadia.

Back in 2019, when Google debuted the Nest Wifi system, it did so more or less side-by-side with the launch of Stadia, the company’s soon-closing game streaming service. To showcase the advantages of Google’s ecosystem, Nest Wifi included a special, optional feature that automatically prioritized any Stadia-related traffic, reducing lag and improving stream quality.

Fast forward three years to present day, Stadia is now set to close down in mid January and Google is launching a new generation of mesh Wi-Fi hardware with the Nest Wifi Pro. It seems the company prepared the Google Store listing and marketing assets sometime before it was decided that Stadia would be shutting down.

Where Google’s own blog post is careful to say that Nest Wifi Pro is able to optimize your network for “streaming,” Zachary Wander on Twitter spotted a direct mention of Stadia on the new router’s “Tech specs” page, under “Automatic Wi-Fi optimization.”

Image: Google
Image: Google

Meanwhile, official imagery of the Nest Wifi Pro — one visible on the “Overview” page, the other on the “How it works” page — includes a shot of two people prominently holding Stadia Controllers, while another shows a father and son playing a Stadia game together.

These inclusions seem to indicate that the decision to shut down Stadia was made sometime after Google’s marketing team prepared for the Nest Wifi Pro launch, between imagery and official feature descriptions.

To a certain extent, the inclusion isn’t necessarily incorrect, as the Nest Wifi Pro should be the best possible router for Google Stadia right up until that January shutdown. But for the fans who are still mourning the service’s upcoming demise, these pictures serve as a reminder of the future that could have been. In all likelihood, the images will be removed in the very near future.

Header image: Google