Google is making their Pixel phones into iPhone replacements by providing the phone at a premium price and specs. Now Google is taking a step further to make it an iPhone replacement by hiring Manu Gulati, one of the chip designers at Apple to be its lead system-on-chip architect. Sources claim that Google hired him to design its own CPUs for the next Pixel phones.
No surprise here as there were rumors floating around in 2016 that the Pixel phones will eventually adopt custom processors, its still questionable why would Google want to push their on chips as they have not had a foothold in the smartphone market as Samsung, Huawei, and Apple which justifies why they created their own chip. Doing this might also increase the price of the phones due to the fact that they would have to create the chips in smaller amounts compared to just buying a bulk of those chips.
Perhaps this is the way Google wants to stand out from the other Android phones who have been using the standard Qualcomm chips, creating a new chip might be the best way they could make a difference in their phones, and if creating their own chips will bring performance improvements or process the Android OS better, then it would make even more sense.