AllThingsD » Google I/O

Yahoo Falls For Tumblr, Google I/O, and Bill Gates on Steve Jobs — 10 Things You Need to See on AllThingsD This Week

Eric Johnson — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:42:49 +0000

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Google Demos Linux Running on Hacked Glass

Ina Fried — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:07:58 +0000

Although Google is offering a limited set of developer tools for Glass — and more are on the way — the company doesn’t want to stop hackers from tinkering even further.

Indeed, during a developer conference session on Thursday, Google showed a variety of ways to gain deeper access to Glass. Some, such as running basic Android apps and even connecting a Bluetooth keyboard, can be done.

Google showed other hacks, such as running a version of Ubuntu Linux. Those actions, though, require deeper “root” access to the device. Google showed how developers can get such access, but cautions that doing so voids the warranty and could be irreversible.

That said, Google plans to make its factory image available so in most cases rooted Glass devices should be able to be returned to their original settings.

The session ended with a video showing a pair of the pricey specs being blended to a powdery mess, to heartfelt groans from the packed audience, many of whom forked over $1,500 to be among the first to buy the developer edition of Glass.

Showing a different level of interest in Glass, several members of Congress sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page on Thursday asking questions about privacy issues raised by the high-tech specs.

Update: At a follow-up Fireside Chat session with developers, Google reiterated that a software development kit for Glass is coming, but Google’s Charles Mendis said not to expect it soon.

Isabelle Olsson, the lead designer for Glass, showed off one of the bulky early prototype designs for Glass as well as a current prototype that combines Glass with prescription glasses.

Prescription Google Glass prototype

Olsson, who quips that she has been working on Glass since it was a phone attached to a scuba mask, said that the development of Glass was “so ambitious and very messy.”

Getting the device light enough has been a key, Olsson said.

“If it is not light you are not going to want to wear it for more than 10 minutes,” Olsson said. “We care about every gram.”

Asked what kind of apps the Glass team would like to see, Olsson said she wanted a karaoke app, while Mendis said he would like to see some fitness apps.

Google Glass product director Steve Lee said Glass is designed around brief glances or “micro-interactions,” rather than watching a movie or reading an entire book.

“That would be painful,” Lee said. “We don’t want to create zombies staring into the screen for long periods of time.

Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength

Liz Gannes — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:24:11 +0000

Imagine this: A big conference where a closely watched tech company launched barely anything new or unexpected.

Image copyright Vlue

And, after confining the audience to their seats for three hours of a hodgepodge of announcements, the CEO of the company came out and bemoaned the industry horse-race mentality (which could be read as hypocritical for many reasons).

Still, the company’s stock spiked up and beyond an all-time high, and everybody raved about how great it all was.

It doesn’t make any sense, of course, unless perhaps you were talking about one of the patented reality distortion field performances of the late Steve Jobs of Apple.

But somehow that’s how it worked for Google this past week at its 2013 I/O developers conference, where nothing big or particularly ambitious was unveiled. Unlike previous editions of the conference that had major reveals, every announcement on Wednesday — dozens and dozens of them — got roughly equal billing and were presented in much the same manner. An exec set up the larger initiative, a product manager did a demo, followed by a feel-good video that showed its potential.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

While there were better tools for app developers, a neat-looking new design for Google Maps, features to automatically sort and edit photos, a way to search by voice from your computer the same way you already can from your phone, a personalized music service, a program to distribute educational tablet apps to students, a different set of software for an existing Samsung smartphone and four more languages for Google’s Knowledge Graph, it was still largely incremental.

Why there was no new rev of Android, just when Apple’s Jonny Ive is busy with a radical overhaul of iOS? Where were the new Nexus devices as the smartphone market gets more competitive than ever? What happened to the promise of Android @home and Google TV? If Apple had done this kind of incremental WWDC, they’d be slammed.

Instead, Google I/O got away without launching any significant revisions — not even a .1 release! — or devices for either its Android or Chrome platforms. It didn’t even spend keynote time on its hot topic “moonshot” projects.

Come to think of it, Google CEO Larry Page’s closing speech about the amazing potential of technology to change people’s lives might have been more fitting at the end of three hours about Google Glass and the self-driving cars. Like last year, when his co-founder Sergey Brin organized his Glass skydiving stunt from an overhead blimp down to the stage, streamed via Google Hangout.

But Wednesday wasn’t about the dream-big stuff of tomorrow, it was about today being a better version of yesterday.

In many ways, Google was filling in a structure it had already built. The company brought many products from one device or platform to another. It applied its artificial intelligence smarts for everything from beautifying photos of faces to anticipating potential searches in context. It added analytics to do useful things like help Android app developers see how effective their Google advertising spending is on driving installs. It personalized, personalized and then personalized.

That’s not to say the many products Google introduced at I/O were not impressive when taken as a whole. Rather, the incremental improvements taken together are building out its massive vision. Maybe we’re getting cynical because today’s reality is too close to science fiction to remember when it seemed crazy. Or maybe Google just hypnotized us all.

Even some Googlers conceded this. In a conversation with Johanna Wright, an eight-year veteran of Google who is now VP of search and assist for Android, she made a similar observation about the keynote.

“Having been at Google so long, I feel like there might be no single leap, no single announcement, but the way it’s coming together feels like a huge leap,” Wright said. “There’s a deep understanding underlying it.”

That Google could pull this off so successfully is interesting, especially when you think about one of its main competitors like Apple, where the news cycle is all about secrets and supplier signals and hope and fickle investors and disappointment and scrutiny.

That’s perhaps because Google is not as caught up in that launch-dependent hardware wowing, but rather has picked a line of products that it commits to and continually improves upon and is then held to a different standard.

That’s one explanation, at least.

Whatever the reason, it worked. In after-hours trading, Google stock was at $918.70 after the big show. In its entire history, it had never crossed $900 before that morning.

Android Quietly Commits to Better Support for Bluetooth

Ina Fried — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:37 +0000

At nearly three and a half hours, you’d think Google would have been able to get all the news into its I/O keynote address on Wednesday.

But a few announcements missed the cut.

One of the more interesting was a commitment by Google to support advanced Bluetooth natively in its Android operating system. Google had supported basic Bluetooth for specific things like keyboards and headphones, but had yet to build in support for the latest version of the wireless technology.

The new move opens up opportunities for a range of new accessories, including very low-power devices.

“I think that opportunity is actually going to be huge,” said Steve Hegenderfer, director of developer relations for the group that oversees the Bluetooth specification. Hegenderfer said that Bluetooth devices have gotten so small that the batteries are sometimes the largest component.

But with support for low energy, Hegenderfer said he expects a wave of devices to hit the market in the next year that are powered by kinetic energy — basically, the energy created by a body in motion.

Google’s move will allow those developing such devices for iOS to offer the same products more easily on Android.

Apple already supports the latest version of Bluetooth, as does BlackBerry with BlackBerry 10 and Microsoft with Windows 8 (though not, as yet, with Windows Phone 8).

The lack of Android support has been a sore spot for developers because it makes an already fragmented hardware landscape even more challenging. Nearly all the devices shipping today have chips that support the latest version of Bluetooth, but until Google’s move, developers didn’t have a unified way to call on the Bluetooth functions.

Instead, developers had to tweak their code not only for particular versions of Android but also based on which Bluetooth chip was in use.

While Google announced its plans on Wednesday, support for the new Bluetooth won’t come immediately. It is due to arrive in a month or two, with the next update to the Android programming interfaces.

Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors

Mike Isaac — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:04:51 +0000

Talk about a total head fake.

After writing a post on Tuesday about being diagnosed with a rare voice condition which has barred him from making many public appearances over the past two years, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page made a surprise appearance at Google’s I/O developer conference on Wednesday.

The CEO, who has not appeared at the I/O conference in years, took about 10 minutes to deliver a sort of evangelist-like mission statement, thoughts on how he sees Google’s role in the world at large, and how the different parts of his organization — Android, Google X, Maps, Search — help people.

“Technology should do the hard work,” Page said, “so that people can get on with doing the things that make them happiest in life.”

Page’s appearance is noteworthy in that, unlike other technology CEOs — Zuckerberg, Cook, Bezos — Page has not often stepped into the limelight for new product introductions or company updates, aside from his appearances on the company’s earnings calls.

But unlike his quarterly appearances filled with balance-sheet numbers and chats with Wall Street analysts, Page’s talk today aimed to appeal to a more emotional part of his audience, even evoking a memory of a time he went to a technology conference with his father, when Page was a child.

At other moments, Page seemed to wax philosophical. “If I think back to a long time ago, all of humanity was basically farming or hunting all the time,” he said. “If you lived in that time, you probably hoped that you could feed your family. For us, we don’t worry about that … and the reason for that is technology.”

Indeed, a lot of the speech had a very “Kumbaya” feeling to it, with Page calling for an end to the animosity that inhabits much of the tech industry.

“Every story I read about Google is ‘us vs some other company’ or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting,” Page said. “We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress.”

Yet in the very same address, Page took some potshots at competitors like Microsoft and Oracle, both of which are involved in litigation over certain Google products.

When asked during a Q&A session about the fate of Android in light of Oracle’s court victories, Page seemed eager to snipe: “Money is more important to them than cooperation,” Page said.

Speaking of a lack of cooperation, just today The Verge surfaced a cease-and-desist letter from Google to Microsoft, demanding that Microsoft remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phone devices, citing a lack of in-app advertising. Funny timing.

Page is hardly the only Google executive — much less Google employee — to shoot down competitors. Google Maps VP Brian McClendon was eager to make a subtle dig at Apple’s less-than-lauded mapping product. And Google+ SVP and long-time I/O emcee Vic Gundotra has thrown quite a few competitive elbows at other tech companies in his time.

Regardless, the Street seemed to eat it up. Shares of Google reached an all-time high on Wednesday afternoon, hitting $916.38 per share, before edging back slightly to close at $915.89.

Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting

Mike Isaac — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:40:01 +0000

Google introduced yet another design revamp for its Google+ social product at its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, the second visual overhaul for the service in about two years.

And guess what? Like many other startup visual layouts today, it’s beginning to look a lot like Pinterest.

Three-column design spreads the content — photos, video, etc. — across the whole screen instead of relegating it to the single column Google+ uses today. Something cool: Photos and video are dynamic, sometimes spreading out over the entire column view.

Like Instagram and Twitter, of course, Google+ wants to co-opt hashtags into its service more deeply — but with a slightly different take on them. Google can scan one of your entries — text or photo — and impressively add a few hashtags it thinks relevant to your post (delete-able, obviously). Click the hashtag, and you can go down the rabbit hole of conversation based on that given hashtag.

So it’s pretty! Now to see how many people actually want to use it.

With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service

Mike Isaac — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:56:55 +0000

Yep, Google’s Spotify competitor is here.

Google unveiled its long-rumored music subscription service at its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, aiming to take on Spotify, the one dominant player in the category.

It’s called Google Play Music All Access, and it has pretty much everything Spotify does. Explore different categories of music, flip through featured content from Google’s editors, browse some of the top albums and songs, and create playlists inside the app. It’s available across the Web — which is nicer than Spotify’s desktop client — as well as on Android phones and tablets.

The biggest likely draw is the radio station option. Listen to one track, and turn it into a radio station that is tailored to your listening habits. If you don’t like what’s in the queue that Google has given you, you can swipe away the music you don’t like. Better radio, as Google positions it.

How interesting! Especially considering that Apple is working on an online music radio competitor with extended features, and Pandora, of course, is going to have to fight on all sides to keep its business strong.

Here’s the biggest drawback: Unlike Spotify, All Access comes with only one pricing plan — $10 monthly. (It’s free for the next 30 days, and you can get it for $8 if you sign up before July).

That means no ad-supported free version, which arguably has been the reason why Spotify has gained more than six million paid subscribers globally to date, and more than 20 million active users of the service overall.

I’m curious to see the level of traction All Access gets compared to Spotify, mostly because Spotify has another key advantage: Facebook. The social giant is a nice boost of traffic for Spotify, surfacing users’ listening activity to the billion-plus users on the social network. Google’s All Access, on the other hand, has Google+. That hardly stacks up to Facebook’s reach.

Time to watch, wait, and see if Googlers are willing to pony up the dough.

Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming

Ina Fried — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:11:23 +0000

Google said on Wednesday that there are now 900 million Android devices out there.

“It’s an extraordinary achievement,” Google’s Sundar Pichai said at the company’s I/O conference in San Francisco. “But it is an incredible ecosystem achievement.”

There were 100 million activations in 2011, and 400 million as of 2012. But, as Pichai notes, there are seven billion people on the planet. The company’s goal is to start reaching the next several billion people who have never had access to the Internet — a goal Eric Schmidt talked about recently during his appearance at D: Dive Into Mobile.

On the app side, Google’s Hugo Barra said the company has paid out as much to developers in the first four months of 2013 as it did for all of 2012.

In its first announcements of the show, Google launched a pair of new location tools that developers can use to include Google’s mapping services into their apps. Of particular note is a new low-power tool that Barra said will use less than 1 percent of battery life per hour. That’s important because location-aware apps tend to be big battery drains. In addition, Google said it would support developers including geo-fencing, as well as the ability to use a phone’s accelerometer to recognize if someone is walking, cycling or driving.

Google also announced a series of new services targeted at game developers, including the ability to save one’s game state to the cloud and to create multiplayer games.

“We’re going to deal with all the hard networking connections,” Barra said. (However, the demo of said multiplayer gaming didn’t work quite as planned.)

Google also announced support for achievements and leaderboards (a la Xbox Live and the iOS Game Center). Google’s game services will work across both iOS and Android.

Additionally, Google is updating the tools that Android developers use to make their apps and the console used to market and sell the programs. Among the features are a means to gauge effectiveness of advertising by tracking referrals, as well as for developers to purchase professional translations to quickly get their apps into more languages.

And, in stark contrast to Apple’s approach with iOS, Google is adding support for developers to do public beta testing of their apps and to deploy updates in stages to various percentages of their users.

The company is also upgrading its Google Cloud Messaging service to support an always-on connection between a developer’s servers and Google’s data center, and adding the ability to send messaging back to servers from an app. Also, when a notification is dismissed on, say, a phone, it will go away on one’s tablet, too.

Google Tops $900 for First Time Ever

Steven Russolillo — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:58:38 +0000

Google Inc. jumped above $900 on Wednesday for the first time ever, less than three months after the search giant’s shares initially topped $800.

The move comes on the same day of the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, in which Google is set to launch a paid subscription music-streaming service akin to that of Spotify AB. In the past, the company has used this conference to preview music-related initiatives.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More

Liz Gannes — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:57:00 +0000

Here at the densest concentration of Google Glass devices since the factory floor, team AllThingsD is covering the news out of Google’s I/O developer conference this morning.

The maker of Android and Chrome is just about to kick off a three-hour keynote, and if you want to see it for yourself, you can: Here’s the livestream. Meanwhile, we’ll be doing live coverage, but it’ll be quick blurbs and takeaways rather than transcribing every last Googley word.

Anticipation is high; Google shares just topped $900 for the first time ever.

“We are very fortunate to have two platforms,” says Sundar Pichai, who is now in charge of both Chrome and Android and also Google Apps. He’s addressing an I/O audience of 6,000 in-person attendees and some 1 million via livestream. He notes the advent of smartphones and connected devices has been a massive, rapid and global change over just the past six to seven years.

There have been 900 million Android activations to date, announces Pichai. Here’s some more context on those numbers, via Ina Fried.

As an update to Google Play services, Android product leader Hugo Barra announces three new location tools for developers that will reduce battery drain and add awareness of users’ location and activities for the purposes of geofencing and activity tracking (the latter thing is just like the Moves app for iOS, which understands the difference between walking, running and biking motions as you’re carrying a phone).

A few more of Barra’s Google Play updates that get cheers from developers will help sync accounts and notifications across multiple devices. Plus, new game developer tools on Android, iOS and web will show personalized leaderboards, help players challenge each other and save games.

Google introduces a brand-new development environment, Android Studio, for building applications. It helps rapidly visualize layouts across different devices, languages. This goes over extremely well with the developer audience.

And here’s some more stuff that developers care a lot about, and other platforms like Apple’s iOS don’t do a great job of. Later this summer, Google will add new Android analytics tools to help developers do things like track conversions from their app advertising and visualize revenue over time and geography. Plus, a biggie for people making new apps: Beta testing and staged rollouts with private feedback.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty APIed out,” says Barra. Yes indeed!

On to content and entertainment: Personalized recommendations for content in Google Play are rolling out “over the coming weeks,” and navigation is improved. This gets the mildest round of applause so far.

But here’s the real news: Google Play Music All Access, which comes with “a uniquely Google approach,” says Google content guy Chris Yerga. For some savvy handicapping, here’s Peter Kafka’s advance take.

What is interesting about it? The radio service is interactive (you can mess with what’s coming next), it has personalized recommendations and it includes Google’s collection blended with your personal library. It’ll cost $9.99 per month but there are some promo and trial options. Here’s a fuller summary from Mike Isaac.

Barra shows off a Galaxy S4 running Google’s Nexus version of Android rather than jammed with Samsung stuff. Not cheap, though. It’ll be sold for $649 on Google Play on June 26. Ina Fried has more here.

Back to Chrome and Chrome OS. The browser now has 750 million monthly active users, up from 450 million last year. As for Chromebooks, Sundar Pichai offers no actual numbers, but says they’ve been the No. 1 seller on Amazon for a while. (C’mon, where are the numbers?)

Next, an update on some of the underlying Web formats, tools and components that Google contributes to. This now includes a data compression proxy for Chrome for Mobile that sounds like like Opera and Onavo. Plus, some demos of what’s in the pipeline, including a nifty race car game played on a track made of five devices laying next to each other that keeps in sync using Web sockets. Lauren Goode has more on all the Chrome news here.

Sundar Pichai is giving out Chromebook Pixels to everyone at I/O, which they are rather stoked about.

How about them Google Apps? Lots of people use them — 74 of the top 100 U.S. universities. That was an extremely short segment.

And another little launch coming this fall: Google Play for Education. Google wants to help schools manage Android tablets, offering a library of apps recommended by teachers, and mechanisms to push apps directly to groups of student devices.

Plus, cute kids around the world use Chromebooks, as displayed in like the 30th feel-good product movie of this keynote.

Vic Gundotra says he’s here to introduce 41 new features for Google+, which I hope he is not going to go through one by one.

The G+ feed is now three columns, with posts tiled like Pinterest.

Google is also going to automatically tag posts with hashtags so people can find related content. These are extracted with image recognition and text analysis.

Also, Gundotra says as part of Google’s efforts to help computers get out of people’s ways, it will better support multiplatform conversations. That means: group messaging, persistent conversations between groups (a la GroupMe a few years ago), albums of shared images, synced notifications, free group video and support for Web, Android and iOS as of today.

On to photos: Google wants its data centers to be your darkroom, says Gundotra, who seems to only speak in slogans. G+ saves “all the pixels, because some memories are not meant to be downsized,” says Gundotra, with a nice visualization that shows how much larger G+ photos are than Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Also, new tools will help users find their best photos and edit them, especially faces. Vanity, eat your heart out.

For further reading, Mike Isaac has detailed pullouts on the new G+ stream design and Hangouts.

“Auto awesome” features like collage generation, smile detection, making a series into a GIF and stitching panoramics are now generated automatically. And these features have been in “dark launch” so Google is already ready to spring them live on every photo you’ve ever uploaded.

Next up: Amit Singhal wants to talk about “the end of search … as we know it.” He’s the smiley guy who always talks about the Star Trek computer. Yup, there we go: He dreamed as a child of building the Star Trek computer for the world.

Google’s Knowledge Graph is today coming to Polish, Turkish and Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, adding to nine existing languages.

Singhal announces conversational search for the desktop and laptop. Users can launch voice queries by saying, “Okay, Google.”

Plus, Google Now, the smart personal assistant app, is adding reminders, public transit and TV shows.

Johanna Wright demos a voice search using the new tools for Chrome and Chrome OS with the premise of planning a trip to Santa Cruz. Her computer listens to a set of queries including “How far is it from here” that returns directions with current traffic.

More snazzy voice demos: Saying “when does my flight leave” returns a personalized result based on email archives, “show me my pictures from New York last year” brings up photos with those characteristics, and giving commands sends emails and sets reminders. Basically it’s like Siri, but it seems to actually work.

Ina Fried has more on this voice search section here.

Maps head Brian McClendon comes next. Google has a long history of building and growing its map quality — subtext: Unlike some other noobs in the industry — and McClendon recaps the history of Google’s mapping layers: local data, imagery, street view (including underwater view) and base maps. Over 1 million websites are using Google maps today, he says.

Google Maps for iPhone is “sleek, simple, and let’s not forget, accurate,” says Daniel Graf. So what’s next for mobile maps?

Google is launching a unified five-point rating scale for local results, says Graf, which doesn’t really seem like an innovation to brag about. There’s also a nice new swipeable interface for browsing venues, plus discount offers appearing within listings (from Starbucks at first, with more to come). Also, some Waze-like features: accident reports and live rerouting. And, a tablet version for both iOS and Android. But none of it is ready yet. Will be out this summer.

An interface preview of the new desktop Google Maps UI shows that they’ve gotten rid of the uninformative map pins in favor of labels shown directly on each place. The big idea: “The map is the user interface.” Maps are personalized based on users’ history (like Google Now), so they can each navigate via their own landmarks and find related places and nearby streets each time they click.

A new transit schedule viewer looks a lot like Hipmunk. Users can also submit “photo spheres” from their phones by capturing a big multidimensional photo all around them. Also, here’s a mindblower: When you zoom out, the view of the Earth shows clouds in real time. And you can zoom all the way out to the Milky Way.

This isn’t released to the public yet, but you can sign up to check it out at maps.google.com/preview.

Larry Page appears onstage, a surprise given he just explained his vocal cord paralysis condition publicly yesterday. He has a message for developers: Technology is amazing.

Page is having a bit of a Bono moment. He explains the arc of Google’s vision: Technology should do the hard work, so people can live their lives. “I think we’re all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to change people’s lives and help the world.”

Page says he wants to build great things that don’t exist, so press comparisons to competitors are overdone. “Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero-sum.”

Progress displaces the past, Page notes. “I’m sure people in the future will think we’re just as crazy as we think people in the past were, having to do hunting or farming all the time.”

And to that end, recruiting young people to care about science is important. Page explains that Google participated in the upcoming movie “The Internship” as a way to market computer science.

And now something even less expected: Page takes audience questions. First up, predictably, is Robert Scoble. Page notes that he didn’t need to see Scoble’s picture of himself in the shower wearing his Google Glass. Point for Larry.

Page answers a question about the potential of a Web-based operating system for mobile; he’s disappointed about the industry state of warring platforms, saying, “The software you write should run everywhere easily.”

How does Google protect freedom, asks a woman from Colombia. It’s difficult and important, says Page, but transparency is key.

About fiber, Page says increasing capacity increases the potential for doing interesting things. Beyond gigabits, the next step is low-latency connections.

Meanwhile, Google stock is trading above $906, with the company’s market cap passing $300 billion.

On Glass production, Page isn’t willing to say much of anything specific. He says it’s about making users happy. He loves using it with his young kids.

Page’s advice for a kid: Try to cut deep to the real issues. The power grid and manufacturing, not incremental stuff. Asking how far are you off the raw materials cost helps you think about the longer view.

Here’s Mike Isaac’s story on Page’s appearance.

12:19 pm: Just going to add in a timestamp here to note this has been ridiculously long.

Page extends his positivity riff into limitations. He says he doesn’t just want to inspire computer scientists, he also wants lawmakers who understand technology. There should be something in the world like Burning Man, Page says, where technologists can have safe places to experiment on the effects of what they build without deploying them into the normal world.

On healthcare, Page says the main problem is regulatory issues around keeping medical information private. He says he got tons of emails after writing about his vocal cord condition yesterday. “After disclosing, I feel I should have done it sooner. Why are people so focused on keeping medical history private? The answer is insurance companies. That makes no sense. We should change the rules around insurance so they have to insure people.”

Page endorses a question about getting more women into tech, and he says that cheap smartphones are key to global social development.

Page goes offstage as it’s announced that Billy Idol is the evening I/O performer. Meanwhile, nobody has the strength to stand given they haven’t had nutrition or water since dawn. What I mean to say is, it’s finally over.

Google to Launch Music-Streaming Service

Amir Efrati and Hannah Karp — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:17:26 +0000

Google Inc.’s Android unit is set to launch a paid subscription music-streaming service akin to that of Spotify AB as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google on Wednesday is hosting its annual conference for software developers, Google I/O, where it has previewed new music-related initiatives in past years and it could unveil the new service then, these people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS

Ina Fried — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:03:11 +0000

There will be plenty of talk about Android at this week’s Google I/O developer conference.

But expect to hear more talk about what the company has been doing to improve its suite of Android services than about big changes to the operating system itself.

“It’s not a time when we have much in the way of launches of new products or a new operating system,” Google’s Sundar Pichai said in an interview with Wired. “Both on Android and Chrome, we’re going to focus this I/O on all of the kinds of things we’re doing for developers, so that they can write better things. We will show how Google services are doing amazing things on top of these two platforms.”

It makes sense that Google is investing a lot in its services that ride on top of Android — and for three main reasons.

First of all, it is these services, rather than Android itself, where Google makes its money.

Second, when Google invests in Android, those are investments that benefit anyone using Android, from loyal partners such as Samsung and HTC to those that heavily modify the operating system such as Amazon and many Chinese phone makers.

Pichai was charitable toward all of the Android efforts, even those such as Amazon that take Google’s work and go in a different direction.

“Under the rules of the license, Amazon can do that,” said Pichai, who now runs Android in addition to his previous duties overseeing Chrome OS. “In general, we at Google would love everyone to work on one version of Android, because I think it benefits everyone better. But this is not the kind of stuff we’re trying to prevent. Our focus is not on Facebook Home or Kindle Fire.”

The third reason why Google can benefit more from updating its services is that such improvements don’t need the same kind of blessing from hardware makers and carriers. With operating system updates needing support from both the device maker and operator, it can take months for devices to get the latest Android OS update, if they are updated at all. Services, by contrast can be updated much more quickly.

Pichai noted that updates remains an area that needs improvement.

“We are thinking about how to make Android handle updates better,” Pichai said in the Wired interview. “We see ways we can do this. It’s early days. We’re talking with our partners and working our way through it. We need time to figure out the mechanics, but it’s definitely an area of focus for me and for the team.”

And just because Google isn’t treating developers to a big new version of Android at I/O doesn’t mean that 2013 won’t see the tasty follow-up to Jelly Bean.

Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference

Liz Gannes — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:26:02 +0000

Over the past couple weeks, in my discussions with people familiar with Google’s plans for its I/O developer conference, there has been a familiar refrain: Don’t expect anything crazy.

They admit that much of the planned news is already out there — there have been solid leaks and clues about refreshes to mapping, video messaging and gaming products. They say there won’t be a big focus on unveiling new devices, unlike other years.

More unexpected Google platform news, like now-scuttled plans to release a physical credit card, isn’t happening. And even some news that might have made sense, like an update on Google’s kooky Nexus Q living-room device, isn’t in the cards.

Now Google is making that downplaying of expectations official. Sundar Pichai is Google’s undisputed developer king, since he now controls the teams working on both Chrome (his long-time domain) and Android (after Andy Rubin stepped down in March). So rather than two days of keynote announcements, this year’s I/O will have only one.

Asked what to expect at I/O, Pichai said in an interview with Steven Levy of Wired:

Pichai also pushed out timelines for combining Chrome and Android (in a year or two, “maybe there’s a more synergistic answer,” he said, but for now he defended the dual operating systems’ coexistence), and making Android updates more universal (“We need time to figure out the mechanics, but it’s definitely an area of focus for me and for the team.”).

A mellower I/O is in some ways a tough draw, given anticipation by Google fans and the press of razzle and dazzle in the vein of Apple. But unlike some other companies — that hype up launches that probably don’t deserve it — Google under Pichai is apparently going to try to host a workaday developer conference.

With some nice gadget schwag handouts, of course.

Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year's I/O.

Mike Isaac — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:08:05 +0000

Nearly one year ago, at its I/O developer conference, Google unveiled its Android-powered Nexus Q media player product to much fanfare. Little more than a month after the big reveal, Google suspended the launch of the Q indefinitely.

So, will Google’s I/O conference — set to kick off this Wednesday — bring news of the Nexus Q’s fate?

No, it won’t. Google won’t have any news on the Nexus Q this week, according to sources familiar with the matter. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Q’s notable absence over the past year is almost as big a deal as its initial unveiling. For Google, the Nexus Q was less a new product than it was a definitive statement; essentially, the search giant was saying that with the fully in-house-designed Q, Google, too, could create beautiful products, just like its greatest competitor, Apple, whose iPhones, iPads and computing devices are fetishized by technologists and design fanatics the world over.

What’s more, the Q was to be manufactured inside the U.S., a stark departure from so many consumer electronics companies whose devices are put together overseas in places such as South America and Asia. And the timing of the initial announcement couldn’t have been better for Google: As Apple was facing harsh criticism for working conditions and wages in overseas operations with partner manufacturing group Foxconn, Google reaped the public relations benefits of claiming to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. of A.

The Q was indeed attractive and well built, a matte-black sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball, encircled in a thin strip of LEDs which alternated in color when interacting with other Android devices. It was sleek, stylish, an item that any design devotee would feel comfortable situating in the middle of their living room.

Aside from looking pretty, the Q didn’t do quite enough to warrant the hefty $300 price tag. The Nexus Q was for all intents and purposes a direct gateway to Google Play, the company’s Web-based media store which sells MP3s and videos to consumers. Link the Q up to your Wi-Fi network and it would be able to tap into a user’s online repository of Google-stored content. Users could control the Q with their Android smartphones and tablets and, ideally, hold listening “parties,” swapping songs in and out of the “queue” of tracks to be played.

However novel, the Nexus Q paled in comparison to devices from competitors like Microsoft, whose massively popular Xbox is capable of delivering all sorts of downloadable content like games, video and music. Apple, too, offers the Apple TV at a modestly priced $100, and is capable of delivering video and music from its iTunes online media store, as well.

As a result of a wave of immediate criticism, Google suspended the Q’s fate indefinitely, citing “initial feedback from users that they want Nexus Q to do even more than it does today,” according to the company’s statement last July. Google said at the time that it was “postponing” the consumer launch rather than halting product development completely, in order to “work on making it even better.”

Indeed, Google will have to return with a strong product to compete in the battle for consumers’ living rooms, an assault waged across all fronts from the world’s biggest American technology companies. Two years ago, Google unveiled Android @Home, the company’s plan to extend Android-based devices into products like in-home lighting fixtures, signaling the company’s grand ambitions to bring Android out of its traditional mobile device roots.

While we’ve seen little progress in the way of news from Google’s @Home efforts since, Microsoft and Apple continue to push for greater market share with their device and content offerings. Even Amazon is reported to be working on its own set-top box, in order to stream its content directly into the homes of consumers.

So, at this week’s I/O, at least, we won’t be hearing about Google’s Nexus Q plans. But there’s always next year.

Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card

Liz Gannes — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:24 +0000

Google will update its Wallet product at its I/O developer conference next week, but will not include the physical credit card that the company had considered launching at the event, according to sources.

Sources said the scuttling — for now — of an extended effort to roll out such a card was announced in a recent memo that also included the news that Google Wallet head Osama Bedier was leaving the company.

Those who have seen it said the Google card had a black face adorned with the whimsical rainbow “W” of the Google Wallet logo, a standard magnetic stripe and the usual raised numbers of a credit card embossed on it.

The card was part of Google’s larger strategic goal to know more about consumer purchases, given the immense potential value of that mostly offline-level data for its massive online advertising business.

Google is already sucking in that purchase data on many fronts — between Google Play payments, Google Checkout on the Web and also advertiser payments — in addition to the dedicated Google Wallet project.

But Wallet has been hampered by its focus on and use of NFC technology, which requires certain phones and special readers to make transactions. Google tried to make that easier by introducing a “cloud wallet” last year that accommodated existing credit and debit cards, but it could still go further toward mobile payments at the register without using NFC.

The dumping of the physical card plan was certainly abrupt, since it had actually been built into the new update of Google Wallet, said sources, and some partners had thought the search giant might be demoing it at the event.

But Google still plans to update its Wallet rewards, offers and loyalty points with the addition of a larger group of merchants, making it a fuller competitor to Apple’s Passbook. Within the Wallet, Google’s “proxy cards” help it get access to data by witnessing transaction flow to merchants.

However, these improvements won’t be integrated with another Google effort that’s similar, Google Now, which already includes support for mobile versions of United Airlines boarding passes and Fandango movie tickets in its Android mobile operating system version. Sources describe the Google Wallet and Google Now teams as “siloed,” which has presented some level of difficulty.

At Google, it was thought that a plastic card might be a way to attract a lot of consumers quickly with a payment method they are familiar with and that is convenient to them.

And the company seemed to have chosen a somewhat conservative approach. Sources said Google wasn’t planning to go so far as to become its own bank or try to disrupt existing interchanges — which would really shake things up in the credit industry — or to get data directly from Visa and MasterCard, which wouldn’t go over well with any number of players in the sector.

But sources also said that Google CEO Larry Page abruptly killed the card launch plan after he was displeased with a glitchy run-through demo last week. He had long been skeptical of a physical card solution, with several sources saying he felt it did not press forward innovation as payments startups like Square have done.

And as those plans fell apart, Bedier, VP of wallets and payments, was pushed out of the company. Google confirmed the departure yesterday; it followed the internal shift of former local and commerce bigwig Jeff Huber to its Google X unit.

Today, the Wallet program is within Google’s ads and commerce division, run by SVPs Susan Wojcicki and Sridhar Ramaswamy. Of the two, Ramaswamy is the exec directly in charge of Wallet.

Another recent addition to the Wallet team is Nik Sathe, who joined at the beginning of this year after being VP of architecture and infrastructure at eBay’s PayPal unit, leading the online payments giant’s technology strategy. Google never announced Sathe’s arrival at the company, and did not reply to a request on Wednesday to confirm it.

Lauren Goode contributed to this report.

Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

Liz Gannes — Wed, 01 May 2013 02:44:39 +0000

For the past few years, Google’s annual I/O developer conference has featured two days of morning keynote speeches, which are basically split into themes of announcements around the company’s two main developer ecosystems: Android and Chrome.

However, the schedule for next month’s edition of Google I/O just came out, and it features just a single day of keynote speechifying — a three-hour session on May 15.

Google hasn’t said it will combine Android and Chrome going forward — though many people continue to think it would make sense as the two operating systems start to overlap more.

So the fact that the two topics will be condensed into one day is notable, especially after Chrome leader Sundar Pichai took leadership of Android after Andy Rubin stepped down in March.

Of course, Google isn’t as simple as just those two units. I/O also hits right in the midst of the rollout of Google Glass, the wearable computer that debuted around the time of the conference last year and is just now becoming available to developers.

And in fact, Glass was the highlight of both days of the keynote in 2012, courtesy of Sergey Brin’s elaborate skydiving stunt, which was replayed in full on day two. So, come to think of it, maybe just one day of content is a better fit.

In addition to the 2013 keynote, there will be multiple breakout sessions about Android, Chrome and Glass, as well as other topics like Google+, Google Maps, YouTube and Google Wallet.

Want a Ticket to Google I/O? Better Check eBay.

Liz Gannes — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:39:21 +0000

Willing to pay $900 for a hot new mystery gadget or two, access to Google executives and platform people, and some delicious lunches? You’re too late. Tickets to Google’s I/O developer conference, May 15-17, sold out this morning in less than an hour, after some reported hiccups with Google Wallet payments.

Google I/O Dates Booked for May; Key Lime to Be Served?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:59:24 +0000

Google said Tuesday that Google I/O, its annual developers conference, will take over San Francisco’s Moscone Center West May 15-17, 2013. Registration won’t open until next year. For updates, keep an eye on the Google Developers Google+ page. Tickets to I/O typically sell out in minutes, as the event is known for its free gadgets and occasionally high-flying spectacle. Likely on tap for this year’s event: Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie and an update or two to the company’s Nexus handsets and tablets.

Google Glass Makes Surprise Appearance at New York Fashion Week

John Paczkowski — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 05:50:39 +0000

Google Glass may not be prêt-à-porter for the general public, but for the fashion elite, it’s ready to wear. Debuting her spring 2013 collection at a Fashion Week event in New York City Sunday, designer Diane von Furstenberg incorporated Google’s futuristic eyewear into her runway show.

An unusual collaboration for Google, which has previously publicly shown off Glasses twice, both times at its 2012 developer event, Google I/O. But there is a rationale for it the Fashion Week appearance: The $1,500 glasses are being used to record behind-the-scenes video footage for a short movie about von Furstenberg’s creative process.

“I am so excited to introduce Glass to the fashion world and use this revolutionary technology to give everyone a unique perspective into fashion,” von Furstenberg said in a canned statement.

DVF

The film in question, “DVF through Glass,” is to be released on Thursday, Sept. 13, on von Furstenberg’s Google+ page, and is presumably a first step in mainstreaming the device to an audience that pays more attention to New York runway shows than Android source code version changes. Folks like … News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who was completely won over after seeing Google Glass on the DVF runway.

“Genius,” Murdoch exclaimed on Twitter. “Sergey Brin showing revolutionary new glasses at DVF, can take photos, receive texts, give directions, and more. Google Project X.”

Early Google Glass Adopters to Receive Exclusive Project Updates

Mike Isaac — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:21:21 +0000

Those who preordered Google Glass — the company’s dive into wearable augmented-reality glasses — will be privy to exclusive content, special events and private group video Hangouts, according to a mass email sent on Wednesday. Early adopters will meet with the team behind Glass, while Google will also send out private updates on the project’s progress to those in on the first round of hardware. Preorders, which cost $1,500, were available only to those attending Google’s I/O developer conference in June.

Facebook, Google, and the Mirage of "Engagement"

Tim O'Reilly — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 23:53:15 +0000

I’ve been struck by a host of stories lately with headlines trumpeting the fact that people spend more time online with Facebook sites than at Google. Google, of course, has played into this narrative by positioning themselves as a social alternative to Facebook.

What’s sad to me is that Google used to pride itself on the speed with which it helped you find the information you want, and then get out of the way. “Time on site” is a terrible metric for an information utility!

When I’m looking for the answer to a question, when I’m looking for directions or my next appointment, or directions to my next appointment, when I’m getting routed to interesting articles that I want to read, Google provides more utility the less time I spend on site.

There’s a real danger here that Google will fall into the Yahoo! trap, forgetting who they are by pursuing the competition. Yahoo! was a terrific content destination, and lost its way trying to be a search engine. Might Google be doing the same in trying to become a social destination?

With a little time to reflect on the Google I/O announcements, I’m disappointed by how many of them were social time wasters rather than real improvements in utility.

I do think social should be an important part of Google’s strategy, and overall, I’m impressed by the way they are integrating social across all of their products, but my advice for competing with Facebook is to constantly focus on how to make social data more useful — which may mean less time on site — rather than more “engaging.”

Of course, both Google and Facebook time on site is dwarfed by the “time on site” of television, that vast wasteland of passive consumption. That ought to tell us something about the folly of time on site as a metric.

I want services that help me get more benefit from less time online, not services that take me further and further from time in the real world.

This may be why of all the announcements at Google I/O, I’m most excited about Project Glass. While the demo for Glass emphasizes how it can be a powerful vector for social sharing of experiences (that skydive was awesome!), Glass will avoid marginalization (I heard several people refer to it as “the Segway of 2012″) only by focusing relentlessly on becoming useful rather than becoming engaging. It will need to slip into the background rather than being in the foreground, a tool for enhancing our engagement with the real world rather than our engagement online.

Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media

What's Next for Pinterest

Liz Gannes — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:46:47 +0000

Though some Web companies seem to have product surprises around every corner (ahem, Facebook), Pinterest’s road map is actually relatively obvious. For all its popularity and next-big-thinginess and $1.5 billion valuation, Pinterest is missing a bunch of significant components.

In my conversations with people in and around Pinterest, it has been clear that the 40-person company is adding these features as quickly as it can hire and build — all the while keeping up with demand.

But I’ve also been warned that, like many of the products its users save, Pinterest wants its products to feel handcrafted and unique, so it may be a bit slower than some might hope.

So what’s next for Pinterest?

Android: Pinterest showed off its Android app for phones and tablets this week at Google I/O. The new app will feature pinning from other apps on the phone and a multicolumn design (the iPhone version is more self-contained and only has one column). Developer Carl Rice, who joined Pinterest in April, told me that the app would be released later this summer. (That’s me, pictured at right, holding the latest version on a Nexus 7.)

Internationalization: This morning, Pinterest released some of the first translated versions of its site in Iberian Spanish and Brazilian (following American English and Latin American Spanish). Fast internationalization is an increasingly pressing problem for buzzy start-ups, because they face clones earlier than ever.

That was also part of the justification for the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten becoming Pinterest’s latest lead investor. Insiders told me that Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann was particularly interested in the Japanese market because of its aesthetic focus, which he felt aligns well with the site.

iPad: Want to look at big photos of pretty things? Yup.

Open sign-ups: Pinterest still doesn’t allow new users to register for the site; they have to register to request an invite. It’s part of the mystique, sure, but it’s not key to Pinterest’s product, and it certainly inhibits growth. That has mostly been a way to meter access and defend against spam.

But it can be awkward and annoying. Imagine, for instance, that you’re not a registered Pinterest user, but you’re checking out Facebook and see something posted by a friend from Pinterest that you like. You click to get to the site, but are told you can’t get in. You sign up, then you wait a day or so, then you get an email, then you redeem that email while making sure you don’t lose your code. And where were you again? Not on Pinterest.

API: Pinterest is “actively working to make the API available soon,” according to Cat Lee from the platform team on Quora.

Private boards: Right now, all Pinterest activity is public. The company has indicated that will change in the future — for instance, to allow someone to plan a surprise party or save pictures of wedding dresses where the groom can’t see. In March, Pinterest telegraphed the introduction of private boards with new terms of service and privacy policies.

Search: Pinterest may be more of a discovery site, but its search is really not very good.

Attribution and sourcing: Pinterest benefits from the free sharing of images, but it doesn’t want to get in trouble with copyright owners. It has recently introduced attribution for specific sites, and it seems likely that the company will soon work on better ways to capture more metadata.

And while we’re on the topic, there was a suggestion earlier this week that Pinterest had overtaken Tumblr’s traffic in the U.S. (The sites aren’t direct competitors, but they both cater to visual and easy self-expression.)

Since the estimate from Pingdom was based on extrapolated data, I asked comScore for its actual traffic measurement of Tumblr and Pinterest in the U.S. and worldwide.

ComScore replied that Tumblr still has the edge, though it’s close in the U.S. As of May, Pinterest had 20.3 million U.S. monthly unique visitors, while Tumblr had 25.3 million.

Worldwide, Pinterest had 31.9 million uniques in May, while Tumblr had 69.7 million.

Google I/O 2012: A Helping of Gadgets With a Side of Circus Act

Liz Gannes — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:00:03 +0000

If you were trying to learn about Google’s priorities this week at its annual I/O developer conference, you’d be forgiven for being confused. There was no uniting vision, little focus on developer products, less than two keynotes worth of new content and many massive areas of the company never even got a mention.

Google Glass-wearing wingsuit flyers talk to Sergey Brin (small) before they jump out of a plane above Google I/O.

To be fair, even in its old age, Google is still a very look-at-me company. Tickets to I/O sell out in minutes, everyone swoons over the free gadgets and every word uttered onstage is written up by a swarm of publications. The production values are high, and the snacks are tasty.

This year, in its best moments, I/O was also an entertaining circus sideshow — such as when co-founder Sergey Brin rigged a flying human relay race, broadcast live from every angle, to demonstrate Google Glass. Twice.

That said, Thursday’s Day 2 Google Chrome keynote session basically amounted to some mission statements, a few new stats and some expected feature launches. The sole exception was the Google Compute Engine debut.

Then, instead of fresh content on key areas like Google Maps, Google Wallet or Google TV, we got a replay of Brin’s fabulous flying filmers — this time with new camera angles and narration.

The Android keynote on Day 1 had much more content, although even Google is admitting that the new Jelly Bean is not a major software release. It’s officially just version 4.1.

If there were two main takeaways from the event, it’s that Google is increasingly a hardware company, and that its hit list of competitors now includes everyone in tech — Amazon (both Kindle and AWS), Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Sonos and more.

On the hardware front, Google created the Nexus 7 tablet, bringing in partner Asus only four months before launch. It’s leaning in even further with the Android Q streaming device, which will be made at a factory in the U.S. And it’s rapidly internally prototyping the Project Glass wearable computers (whose manufacturing is TBD).

This is not to say Google is yet a true, seasoned hardware player. The company is in the earliest stages of all these hardware projects. While promising, the Nexus 7 tablet is a first-generation device playing catch-up on apps and content. Android Q is very pretty, but is the ability to fight over a communal playlist via Android phone really worth $300? And Glass is more than a year away.

But perhaps the most striking part of I/O was realizing that the target audience for these announcements was really not developers.

The enigmatic new Android Q device gets synced to an Android phone.

Developers got lip service in the keynotes. The Q is going to be “hackable,” Google said briefly. The cool new Android Google Now personalized shortcut feature is limited to only Google content, with no options yet for outside developers to add their own cards.

And while developers got more attention in topic-specific breakout sections — many of which I did not attend — those topics were still limited in their own way. One developer pointed out to me that he had come to hear about building on top of Google Apps, and there was not a single developer session devoted to the topic.

It seemed clear that one group Google was courting was the media — and the many more consumers they reach. The media presence at I/O was bigger than ever, with more than 400 reporters at the event, and press rooms upon press rooms stretching down one hallway.

That was reflected in the presentations, as well. As an example, consider Google+, Google’s big social product. The two Google+ announcements at I/O were: 1) tablet apps, and 2) an event-planning and capture tool.

So: Two incremental new features. No long-awaited Google+ API aimed at developers.

But then, in a personal Google+ post by a product manager on Wednesday, came a significant announcement to introduce the first automatic importing of outside content into Google+.

And then on Thursday, via a developer blog post, the service announced its first platform features for mobile developers.

Isn’t that the sort of stuff you’d announce onstage at a developers conference?

Of course. But, then again, it’s not as captivating as wingsuits and rappelling down buildings.

More Details on Google's Cloud Offering; Many More Details Needed

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:49:32 +0000

Google has released a few more details about Compute Engine, the infrastructure-as-a-service offering it debuted at Google I/O today.

In a company blog post, Craig McLuckie, its product manager, sketched some of the details that didn’t make it into Urs Hölzle’s remarks during today’s keynote address at Day 2 of Google’s developers conference.

The heart of the offering is the ability to run scores of Linux virtual machines on Google’s services. Now, if that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s helpful to be reminded of one key tenet of cloud computing: Virtualization. Basically, one physical computer has so much computing capacity — because processors are now so powerful — that it can act like two or four or 10 computers all at once, all sharing the same hardware.

Google is counting that its experience in harnessing huge swaths of inexpensive computing hardware will give it a competitive leg up against the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Windows Azure, but it’s still available only in a limited preview, so there are going to be a lot more questions.

One piece of the puzzle that Google has going for it is that it is working with several partners that already have a history of helping customers manage their various cloud services. Google named RightScale, a management platform; Puppet Labs; OpsCode, which specialize in automation; Numerate, which uses computing to design drugs; and Cliqr, a cloud applications manager among its partners.

Another partner stood out to me: MapR, whose funding I covered last year, offers a version of Hadoop, an open source, big data technology that’s designed to run in the cloud. It’s already the Hadoop of choice for running on Amazon’s cloud, and now it seems to have an inside track on Google’s.

Then there’s the matter of performance. Amazon has been known to have stability issues: Fifteen months ago it suffered a crash that brought numerous Web services down with it. Google is promising “strong and consistent” performance that customers can rely on and thus tune their applications based on that expectation.

Google is also planning to compete on price. According to its price list, prices are beginning at 14.5 cents per hour for the use of a single virtual processor core with 420 gigabytes of local storage. I’m not familiar enough with all the services to compare it with this price list for Amazon Web Services.

There’s also the question of security. CIOs have often tended to view cloud services with a suspicion based on the perception that the cloud isn’t secure. And while I haven’t read it yet, Google has written a white paper on the subject.

Obviously, more details will be coming out in the days and weeks ahead as Google moves this from a preview to a full-fledged service. It has made a big point today in bragging about its capabilities. Now it remains to be seen if those bragging points can stand up to scrutiny and daily use.

With a Slew of App Updates, Google Continues Its Crusade for the Enterprise

Mike Isaac — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:34:54 +0000

If there was one company in Google’s sights on the second day of its I/O developers conference on Thursday, it was Microsoft. Sundar Pichai, SVP of Chrome and Apps, was eager to remind us of the many ways that Google’s enterprise apps suite rules over the Redmond giant’s offerings.

In the 5 years since Google released Gmail to the public, for instance, the app has grown to reach 425 million monthly active users. Governmental agencies in 45 out of 50 U.S. states are using Google apps, as well as more than 66 universities and five million businesses across the U.S.

As always, Pichai and the apps team pride themselves on the platform’s collaborative properties. Chrome’s synchronicity across devices, Google docs’ realtime updates, and precious, precious speed: Chrome’s speed, Pichai says, saves more than 13 years of human productivity over the course of a lifetime.

“Try doing that with Sharepoint,” Pichai said.

After years of rumors and leaks, Google Drive finally launched weeks ago, and the app is spreading across platforms fairly quickly. Google Drive hit the 10 million user mark and is slated to appear on iOS and iPad on Thursday, the first appearance on Apple’s mobile platform.

Google is also pushing its Chromebooks, the low-cost, web-focused laptops powered by Chrome OS. The new generation of Samsung Chromebooks launched three weeks ago, touting more powerful specs and faster performance than last year’s generation. Google will soon begin selling Chromebooks in more than 100 Best Buy retail locations across the U.S., continuing to seed the landscape with the fledgling platform. (It also helps that Google will give all the developers attending I/O a free Chromebox.)

And, of course, Pichai and his team continue to push the Chrome browser: Usage of the platform has exploded over the past year, with more than 300 million active users, nearly double the number from only a year ago. That number most likely has nowhere to go but up, considering Google announced it is bringing Chrome to iOS devices beginning on Thursday.

Then there was Google Compute Engine, which takes a direct shot at Microsoft’s Windows Azure, and also at Amazon Web Services. It’s a textbook infrastructure-as-a-service play that shows how readily and quickly Google can scale up and down on demand. There are still a lot of details yet to be disclosed about how the service will work and as yet it’s only for early customers on a trial basis.

But the places where Google and Microsoft are not competing head to head are growing fewer by the day.