The Google USB Driver is a generic ADB interface driver meant to cover Nexus and Pixel hardware plus a handful of development boards. Most brand-name phones ship their own driver package instead, but the Google USB Driver is still useful as a fallback: it's the one you reach for when a device has no official Windows driver, when you're running a custom or de-branded ROM, or when a brand's installer refuses to run on your Windows build. Getting it installed and, when needed, extended to cover a device it doesn't already list is a two-part job.
If Android Studio is already on the machine, open the SDK Manager, switch to the SDK Tools tab, tick Google USB Driver, and apply. That downloads the package to a folder such as C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Android\Sdk\extras\google\usb_driver. If you don't want the full IDE installed, the same package is available as a standalone zip from the Android developer site — extract it anywhere convenient.
To install it: open Device Manager, find the phone (it usually shows under "Other devices" or "Android Device" with a warning icon), right-click, choose Update driver, then Browse my computer for drivers, and point Windows at the extracted usb_driver folder. Windows reads android_winusb.inf inside that folder to match your device's hardware ID against a list of known Vendor ID / Product ID pairs.
The driver install fails with "the folder you specified doesn't contain a compatible software driver" when your phone's VID/PID pair isn't present in android_winusb.inf. This is common on smaller brands, rebranded tablets, and some dev boards that never got added to Google's list. Check the guide on reading your device's hardware ID in Device Manager first, since you'll need the exact VID/PID string before editing anything.
Open android_winusb.inf in a plain text editor as Administrator. The file has two similar sections, [Google.NTx86] and [Google.NTamd64], each listing entries in this format:
%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_D001
%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_D001&MI_01Duplicate one of the existing lines under both sections, replacing VID_18D1 with your device's vendor ID and PID_D001 with its product ID (both from Device Manager's hardware IDs property). Use the SingleAdbInterface line if your device presents ADB as its own interface, or the CompositeAdbInterface line with the MI_01 suffix if ADB shares a composite USB descriptor with other functions like MTP — check the hardware ID string itself for an &MI_ segment to tell which case applies.
Save the file, then retry the driver installation the same way as above: Update driver > Browse my computer > point at the folder containing the edited .inf. Windows will now recognize the VID/PID pair and offer to install the Google USB Driver against it.
On some Windows builds, a manually edited .inf trips driver signature enforcement even though the underlying driver binary is unmodified and still Microsoft WHQL-signed, because the .inf's catalog hash no longer matches after editing. If installation fails with a signature error rather than a "no compatible driver" error, you'll need to temporarily disable driver signature enforcement to get past it; the .inf edit itself doesn't touch the signed driver files, so this is a one-time hurdle rather than something you'll hit on every boot.
After installation, Device Manager should show the device under Android Device or Android Phone rather than "Other devices," and adb devices should list a serial number instead of returning an empty list. If the phone still doesn't show up in adb after the driver installs cleanly, USB debugging itself may not be enabled on the device — that's a separate setting from the driver and worth double-checking before troubleshooting further.
For phones from established brands, it's usually faster to install that brand's official USB driver package instead of hand-editing Google's generic one; official packages are less likely to fight with Windows Update and get silently reverted. The INF-editing route is really for orphaned hardware: white-label tablets, older dev boards, or devices whose manufacturer never published a Windows driver at all.
Official reference: Android Studio OEM USB driver documentation.