After the iPad came out in 2010, many electronics companies attempted to cash in on the craze by rushing out their own tablet devices, many of them running Google's Android software.

But besides Apple, only Amazon has been able to really make a name for itself in the tablet market. At $199—well below the price of most other contenders—the Kindle Fire became a consumer hit.

Google has been paying close attention from the sidelines, and now it's ready to join the party with the Nexus 7, a tablet it developed with the help of Taiwanese computer maker Asus. The Nexus 7, announced this week at Google's annual I/O conference in San Francisco and due out in July, takes plenty of cues from the Fire, from its seven-inch display to its $199 price tag. Yet while the Fire is a great little tablet, Google's ability to control the hardware, software, and app ecosystem make the Nexus 7 even greater. And since the Nexus 7 will be bundled with a $25 Google Play credit, the price is really more like $174.