Undoubtedly tired of the struggle against the iPad, Google announced its own branded 7-inch tablet: the Google Nexus 7 by Asus, complete with stellar specs and a rock-bottom price.
We've now been given a new and upgraded 32GB option to join the 16GB offering, with the price not raised above £199, which is hugely impressive for a quad core, Tegra 3-endowed tablet.
Like other Nexus-branded devices, the Google Nexus 7 tablet isn't actually hardware manufactured by Google (as you may have noticed, thanks to the suffix).
As the Mountain View company has done with Samsung, HTC and Motorola in the past, Google paired with Asus to design and manufacture this slender tablet.
It's a smart move: among Android tablets, Asus makes some of the best around, but matching the rock-bottom £129 price of Amazon's Kindle Fire while exceeding its meagre specs would be a challenge for any manufacturer.
And make no mistake: the Nexus 7 by Asus is more of an effort to stomp out Amazon's unwelcome (and forked) version of Android, although now it's having to fight the battle against the iPad mini as well.
That thrown-down gauntlet has been picked up by the Amazonians already though, thanks to the emergence of the Kindle Fire HD, which offered more storage and similar specs for the same price.
In turn Google has now dropped the price of the 16GB Nexus 7 to £159, ditched the 8GB model altogether and released a new model with a Kindle Fire HD-matching 32GB of storage, for £199.
The good news is that very little has been sacrificed along the way, unlike with Amazon's initial offering.
According to Android boss Andy Rubin, Google's profit margin bears the brunt of any sacrifices made, selling the hardware at cost to get customers to pay for content from the Play Store.
And that's ensured the tablet is selling in droves on our fair shores - millions of the things have shifted, with more to come in the pre-Christmas rush. You can even get an official dock from Asus, which debuted at CES 2013, although it's got a rather limited microUSB port and audio line out as it's main points of sale.
But enough about why and how Google and Asus have released the Nexus 7: is it even worth £159 of your hard-earned cash?
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