Google I/O is always a very exciting and entertaining watch. This year’s I/O was no exception. link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFFrahd05OM&t=0s Stuff that I found worth noting
- Office : Workforce has integrated some very very essential features. Folks working from home know for sure how painful it is to remain connected all day with colleagues via call/zoom/text. And (nearly) all of that is just because of unfit software design. While platforms like discord works somewhat, we need better collab tools and Google is indeed working towards that. It was impressive (https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=441). I just hope Microsoft listens and implements at least some of these in their office suite. 0.1. Project Starline : Finally, we are moving towards the sci-fi like era where we make 3-D video calls but this time instead of holographic images, with better believable imagery. Google’s Starline looks and feels promising. 0.2 Carbon Emission: The best way to reduce energy consumption is to perform no computation at all. However, that’s not possible and Google’s approach is commendable to make data centres and office free from carbon emission and run on carbon free renewable energy. This is in conjunction with the fact that we are running extremely low on oil (~42 years of oil left, in current rate of consumption, source: worldometer.info ). Now, renewable energy is not entirely free or clean. Because even for renewable energy sources, we need to manufacture battery and related equipments, which are not really environment friendly. This is a welcome step, but the real game changer will be low-energy computing, which we might achieve while building quantum computer.
- LaMDA : Context aware conversation. So Google Asst has been (Siri, are you listening?) conversing with people since long, what’s new? The new part is this is an actual conversation rather than an assignment of a task e.g. book me a cab or dim the lights. This makes me remember I/O from couple of years back when Sundar Pichai showed asst. conversing in real with people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbHu_bVa_g). Most I/O highlights will show you the Pluto conversation but I found the airplane conversation is a better deal as it’s more abstract and can go in any direction. (https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=1265) The most reverential-fear moment for LaMDA was when Sundar mentioned that this is a single model which does the job, rather than multiple models trained on different topics.
- Pleasure doing science with you: There is a hilarious clip where Michael Peña (yes, the actor!) tries to understand the nitty-gritties of quantum computing fundamentals from Erik Lucero, researcher at Google. (https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=1769) Erik, despite being a highly cited scientist (https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=j0RaYWIAAAAJ…) was amazing as an actor in this clip. I watched the clip twice NGL. 😃
- With growing awareness towards data privacy, with more people like Jaron Lanier (https://g.co/kgs/KeXPQr, he wrote a book called ‘Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now’ and is an amazing speaker) coming and talking about the ad-based model of funding technology, Google clarified about not selling personal info as well as email-content or Google photos/drive data to advertisers (https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=2271). Also mentioned that they do not use health data to target ads, and at the same time acquired Fitbit ( 😮 ) and deploying models related to mammogram and derma-conditions. Also, an important mention is Android’s Private Compute-core. Though, I think the private compute core can be used more than what was shown. e.g. if I am listening to songs which typically go with rain, Google home should (suggest) to dim the lights. The privacy dashboard in Android 12 is real good. So are the quick setting toggles. And at the same time, there are easier deletion options of personal data (search or otherwise) from Google.
- Fake News : ‘About this result’ https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=3217 sure does help fighting fake news, but it’s not enough. IMO, we need more (e.g. an opinion) from Google in fight with fake news.
- Indoor views for public places in Google maps is good, also the walkways direction is very very good.
- Google is looking for new ways to make money and just like Amazon, they have to connect to real money and real business transactions, like selling. Google shopping is taking up momentum, and sure with AR enabled, a shopping exp with google will be very good, but it’s not there yet. https://youtu.be/XFFrahd05OM?t=3696 And that is why, they are partnering with Shopify as well. BUT, many shopify sites are just shams and they disappear once they take your order and payment (happened in my family). Therefore, Google has to take extreme precautions to not let that happen.
- Little patterns or creation of new frames from existing photos in Google photos are very nice features. But they are not ground-shattering.
- Material YOU: While we keep praising Apple for their extremely well thought design, personalizing cellphone themes etc. is the need of the hour and who can better do it other than Google, who already knows a lot about you. I’m patiently waiting for testing (and tasting) this feature. IMO, the material changes in Android 12 could use this better and not just colors of lock screen and shapes of icons. Different people are different and the way they are could have been shown by the phone’s appearance e.g. minimalism is quite the word of the house now and showing how a minimal design can work would’ve been great.
- A funny quirk is Google is talking about Android Auto wireless and digital keys, Apple launches AirTags to find the physical keys. Though AirTags are not exclusive to keys, let’s see what wins.
Politics : A lot of it was circled around diversity and inclusion. There was a huge chunk of attention towards India, Hindi words seen in many slides (Not Bengali or Tamil surprisingly), and Diwali being mentioned once. The photo algorithms being altered to better suit non-white folks is also one of them. Google Keynote (Google I/O ‘21)