After finding indicators in the latest beta of Google Play Services, it looks like the branding of Android Wear has officially moved to Wear OS. Google launched a new site this morning for the platform, removing the Android Wear name in favor of the new one.
Wear OS by Google Site
As indicated before, this rebranding makes a lot of sense. Google has been slowly separating things from the Android name, instead making them Google branded or generic. The best example of this is the recent change from Android Pay to Google Pay. For Android Wear, this makes sense because Wear devices have long been compatible with iPhones thanks to the Wear app.
This rebranding should also calm some concerns of Android Wear fans that the platform would be going away. There hasn’t been a lot of Wear news these past few months but that could be changing. This rebranding is the first indicator and the upcoming agenda at Google I/O 2018 also has several Wear centric sessions.
As for content on the new site, there isn’t much in the way of new. There is a big emphasis on the fact that Google Assistant is built into the platform and that it can run stand alone apps, things we’ve known and used since the Wear 2.0 release last year.
