A couple of weeks ago rumors surfed on the Interwebz that Google was planning on opening its own retail stores in the United States. 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]