They could have figured out a way to spread some of the cost of the phone over monthly payments, so that buying a device didn’t seem so expensive or budget-busting. They could have made phones designed to work on pay-as-you-go networks like Metro PCS and Cricket. A Google equivalent of Apple’s Genius bars, for its Nexus Ones, could have taught people why the device was cool and how to make it even better.

But Google didn’t do any of that. It didn’t fight, at all.