Hot-air balloon pilot Richard Varney typically spends his weekends transporting tourists around central Massachusetts in a huge, multicolored balloon. But on a recent Sunday, Varney drove to a local community college and learned to fly a different type of aerial vehicle. "I want to try something new," he said as he watched an instructor demonstrate how to steer a $2,000 drone equipped with a camera. "This could help me launch a side business taking aerial photos of local towns." At least 15 community colleges across the country now have courses that teach people how to pilot drones, according to research conducted by MIT Technology Review.

The company best known for its search engine wasn't kidding around: It made hardware the centerpiece of its Google I/O developers conference here and later poached Amazon executive David Foster, who ran the lab responsible for Amazon's Kindle tablet and Echo smart speaker, to head hardware product development. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has referred to hardware as "our next big bet." A year later, Google has discovered that hardware can be, well, hard. As Google gets ready to lay out its vision at this year's I/O Wednesday, it's still making that hardware bet pay off. Pixel phones are in short supply and relatively few have sold.