Before Android, before the iPhone, and before GoPro became a known brand, the Flip Video camcorder took the world by storm, allowing millions to shoot digital home videos one-handed and easily save, share, and upload them to a nascent YouTube, thanks to an iconic flip-out USB port.
What you probably didn’t know: the Flip Video was almost a Google-branded camera, internal Google emails revealed by the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust sub-committee show. It would have been Google’s first camera and perhaps the first piece of Google-branded hardware as well.
In January 2006, a year and a half before the first Flip Video went on sale, Google Video product manager Peter Chane tried to convince his colleagues that they...
