Just like FLIR. They started with big expensive uncooled bolometers that required analog amplification (+1 chip), digitization (+1 chip) and processing (+1 more chip), and ended up producing all in one Lepton chip that interfaces using MIPI like every cellphone camera. They went from sensor + 2 analog chips + fpga to one small piece of silicon.

After all Google wants every android phone of the future to be able to do this. This means making every manufacturer buy additional hardware. It needs to be cheap and easy to use.

In the end Tango will probably be a licensed core that camera manufacturers can integrate into their own designs. One camera that does vision _and_ maps environment on the side.