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A couple of weeks ago rumors surfed on the Interwebz that Google was planning on opening its own retail stores in the United States ^[2]. You know what they say about rumors… erm, actually, never mind — I can’t think of something clever to say. Let’s just get to the meat of this post: Google has denied plans to open its own retail stores.

At Mobile World Congress 2013, Google’s head of Android Andy Rubin told a bunch of reporters that he felt people “don’t have to go in the store and feel it [devices] anymore” and “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”. Furthermore, Rubin responded directly to the rumor of Google opening retail stores by flatly denying it: “Google has no plans and we have nothing to announce”.

Now does this mean Google will never open retail stores? It is hard to say. However, Rubin is a fairly high-level executive in the company. Unless he likes dishing out misinformation, if he says Google isn’t planning on doing it then Google probably isn’t planning on doing it.

[via AllThingsD ^[3]]