Coolest thing I see is on the NewEgg page where it says it's "weave" ready, and you can see the Zigbee/Bluetooth radios. It's a router, and it's the smart home hub.
I'm really surprised this part didn't generate more attention from the HN crowd. Currently IoT devices always end up having some kind of protocol adaptor unit, like wifi->zigbee and it sucks!
As far as I know, the Almond+ is the only other router with 802.15.4 support.
1. Overall-- this can, theoretically speaking, integrate all- WiFi IoT, Zigbee IoT, Thread IoT, Weave IoT. Whichever way the market picks-up, Google can.
2. On top of that, the specs are good enough to stream multiple IP cams.
3. Shot in the dark, but with all the "six 2.4GHz antennas, six 5GHz antennas, and a congestion-sensing antenna" they're probably trying to fix the classical WiFi congestion and star-topology range issues that comes with WiFi IoT. Especially because it supports 128 devices in WiFi.
4. Rumors are, it already runs Brillo, their IoT OS they showcased at IO.
5. Its bridge mode support be something they can use to have "multiple BRs" as promised by Thread?
As far as I know, the Almond+ is the only other router with 802.15.4 support.