“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.

RELATED POSTS:

• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
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• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
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• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
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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.

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• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
• Google Doubles Down on Music Subscriptions, Which Means Google Isn’t Serious About Music Subscriptions
• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

And, yes, Google still plans to launch a separate subscription music service later this year, via its YouTube site.

Make sense? Of course not.

It makes lots of sense for both YouTube and Play, which was built for Google’s Android devices, to sell music subscriptions.

YouTube is the world’s biggest free music service, which could make it a fantastic funnel for a Spotify-like paid offering, which can also help solve some problems with the music labels.

And if you’re going to have the world’s dominant mobile platform, then you ought to be the one selling music subscriptions that work on it, because that could help your customers stick to that platform. No sense in handing that feature over to Spotify, which works fine on iPhones and Kindles, too.

And something that knitted Android and YouTube together — combining a mix of free, paid, mobile, audio and video — could be great.

But that’s not what we’re going to see this week.

Music folks I talked to today expect the Google Play version to be paid-only — no free teaser tier, like Spotify has — and without any features that will set it apart from rivals.

And when YouTube launches its service — as best as I can tell, talks with the Big Three labels are all but completed — that service will likely run parallel to, but not connected with, the Play version. Which means none of the free music that people can get on YouTube will help sell Play subscriptions.

This set-up supposedly stems from former Android boss Andy Rubin’s insistence on controlling his own fiefdom (“Andy and [YouTube head] Salar Kamangar couldn’t be in the same room together,” said a music executive who has worked with both of them). But now we’re in the Sundar Pichai era, and he said he’s all about peace and love.

I’ve heard people in and outside of Google suggest that at some point down the line the two services could be knitted together. After all, just because something gets announced at Google I/O doesn’t mean it will show up. And getting something out there before it’s fully baked is standard operating procedure for Google.

But music subscriptions are an old idea that still really haven’t caught on in a big way. Spotify has six million paying customers worldwide, but its backers concede that it’s still a long way from mainstream. And none of its competitors are even close to those numbers.

If Google really wanted to make subscriptions work, instead of simply offering them as a feature most people won’t use — like the music store it opened up in 2011 — it ought to take the time to get this one right the first time.

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• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
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• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

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.

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• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
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• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
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• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
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• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

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:

It’s going to be different. It’s not a time when we have much in the way of launches of new products or a new operating system. 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.

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.

RELATED POSTS:

• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
• Google Doubles Down on Music Subscriptions, Which Means Google Isn’t Serious About Music Subscriptions
• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

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.

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• Shoot the Moon: How Google Turned a Hodgepodge of Upgrades Into a Show of Strength
• Google I/O: Music, Maps, Messaging and More
• Larry Page Takes the Pulpit to Praise Technology, Snipe at Competitors
• Next Google Maps Update to Include Better Venue Search, Waze-Like Rerouting
• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
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• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

Although we are only about a month out from our 11th D: All Things Digital conference, we still have a few big speakers to announce, not the least of which is Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who made his debut at D10 last year in his first major interview as the new leader of the iconic and powerful tech giant, will be kicking off the proceedings with an interview with us on the opening night of the conference.

There’s lots to talk about, from the explosive growth of the mobile market to intense competition from a range of rivals, most especially Google’s Android, as well as innovative offerings from Korea’s Samsung. It will also be interesting to talk about the changes at Apple under the leadership of Cook, who took over from the late co-founder and industry legend Steve Jobs, as well inquiring about what new products are in the pipeline and how the company is faring in an increasingly high-pressure market.

Cook joins a long list of stellar speakers slated to appear onstage at D11 from May 28 to 30, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility’s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Jeff Immelt of GE, new Android chief Sundar Pichai, Sony’s Kaz Hirai, ABC’s Anne Sweeney and more.

But we are not quite done yet, so stay tuned for announcements of out final speakers. And, while we never reveal them before the event, our D11 demos are among our best ever. (Special note: D11 has been sold out for months, but we provide coverage and videos from it throughout the conference.)

Until we get them all in person, here’s the full Cook interview from D10 to peruse:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130430/apples-tim-cook-returns-to-d-stage-to-open-11th-annual-conference/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130402/more-d11-speakers-sinofsky-staggs-sweeney-pichai-ricci-and-a-pretty-little-liar/ http://allthingsd.com/20130402/more-d11-speakers-sinofsky-staggs-sweeney-pichai-ricci-and-a-pretty-little-liar/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:13:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=308339

A few weeks ago, we posted our initial list of speakers for the 11th D: All Things Digital conference, which takes place May 28 to 30 in Palos Verdes, Calif.

Already, we have an amazing gathering onstage, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility’s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, GE’s Jeff Immelt and many more.

And, today, we’re adding more names to the already action-packed list of top media and tech names — although we’re still not done unveiling all of them yet, with some big ones yet to come.

But the latest group should continue to provide some news-packed interviews onstage, given their varied careers at some of the most important tech and media companies around.

First off, Walt Mossberg and I are thrilled to bring back Steven Sinofsky, who left Microsoft earlier this year after runnings its flagship Windows franchise. (In fact, he demoed Windows 8 onstage in 2011.) As one of the software giant’s most high-profile and voluble execs (his numerous internal blog posts at the company were riveting), Sinofsky has always had a keen view of the entire tech landscape beyond Redmond, Wash. Thus, Sinofsky Unplugged is sure to be a lively thing to watch.

Also interesting will be another returnee, Sundar Pichai of Google. Already head of its Chrome efforts, he has quite recently been thrust onto a bigger stage after the sudden departure of Andy Rubin as head of the search giant’s Android unit. Now, taking over the key mobile unit, the affable Pichai is charged with making sure Google stays strong in the sector.

Among the most important parts of the entire mobile ecosystem is voice, which is why we wanted to get the leader of the most powerful company in the sector — Nuance Communications chairman and CEO Paul Ricci — onstage to talk about where it’s all headed. Nuance powers Apple’s Siri (allegedly) and also owns Dragon NaturallySpeaking, making it a dominant force in the efforts to make devices interact with us all more effortlessly and hands-free.

We’re also convinced that Hollywood is really starting to grok the importance of digital in reaching consumers of its entertainment products. That’s especially true in the television market, which has had to try to figure out how to attract viewers in more innovative ways. None has been more immersive in this effort than ABC Family’s hit teen-aimed show, “Pretty Little Liars,” which has used Twitter, Facebook and much more to keep itself on top in the ratings. We’ll have Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, and PLL creator and executive producer I. Marlene King onstage to talk about the ups and downs and ins and outs of it all.

Lastly, also from Disney, we’re adding Tom Staggs, the chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, whose job it is run what is perhaps one of the most logistically challenging efforts in the world. He’ll be discussing how the parks use technology and innovation to take the entire “guest” experience to a new level. That includes showing off its latest effort, MyMagic+ and the Magic Band, which is aimed at creating a more personalized and customized visit and is being rolled out in the next few months.

That’s a lot of speakers, but we are still not done — so watch this space for more to come soon. (FYI: D11 has been sold out since late last year, but we will be posting lots of videos on the proceedings and perhaps even streaming some sessions.)

Until then, here is a different kind of video of the PLL cast doing the Harlem Shake, um, their way:

Harlem shake PLL style @ashbenzo @shaymitch Tyler Blackburn, Lucy Hale, Troian Bellisario

Apr 1, 2013| Source: Keek.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130402/more-d11-speakers-sinofsky-staggs-sweeney-pichai-ricci-and-a-pretty-little-liar/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130321/googles-schmidt-says-executive-moves-dont-necessarily-mean-chrome-os-and-android-getting-hitched/ http://allthingsd.com/20130321/googles-schmidt-says-executive-moves-dont-necessarily-mean-chrome-os-and-android-getting-hitched/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:25:17 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=305684 When Google announced last week that responsibility for Android was shifting to Chrome head Sundar Pichai, it was an easy assumption that Google might be headed toward merging its two operating systems.

However, that’s not necessarily going to be the case, a fact reiterated this week by none other than Google Chairman Eric Schmidt.

The two products will remain separate, though they may have more overlap going forward, Schmidt said during a talk in India, according to Reuters.

Indeed, the two have been growing closer, especially since Chrome finally became the browser inside Android.

But closer doesn’t mean one and the same.

Pichai himself said he’s okay with there being two operating systems, at the recent Chromebook Pixel launch.

“We’re comfortable at Google with two viewpoints, and we are doing both,” he said.

Of course, tech companies are famous for saying they aren’t going to do something, right until they do it.

We’ll be sure to ask Schmidt about this and other topics when he takes the stage next month at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in New York.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130321/googles-schmidt-says-executive-moves-dont-necessarily-mean-chrome-os-and-android-getting-hitched/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130313/andy-rubin-stepping-down-as-android-head-was-sudden-but-inevitable/ http://allthingsd.com/20130313/andy-rubin-stepping-down-as-android-head-was-sudden-but-inevitable/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 01:24:48 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=303376 Andy Rubin is a brilliant visionary and a fierce executer, and he may have more acts up his sleeve.

But, at a time when mobile is increasingly big business at Google, the father of Android is no longer at its helm.

Google CEO Larry Page has substituted a grounded and effective operator, Sundar Pichai, for the independent Rubin.

It was certainly a sudden move.

Rubin had been confirmed to speak at our D11 conference in May; you don’t do that when you’re easing your way out. In the time between giving wide-ranging comments on Google’s plans two weeks ago and dropping out of a speaking slot at SXSW this past weekend, something changed.

But that doesn’t mean Rubin wasn’t ready to move on; as Android grew, he had been frustrated with the large-scale operational work, and wanted to return to passion projects in robotics and home automation, said sources close to Rubin.

In their explanations of the move, both Rubin and Page referred to Rubin’s desire to “start a new chapter at Google,” with Rubin saying he is “an entrepreneur at heart.” Though there’s much speculation that he might join Google’s “moonshot” group Google X, our sources said that was not necessarily the case.

Android — which began life as an independent company Rubin co-founded in 2003 — is now a massive and growing force in mobile. Sure, some might grumble about the many forks and flavors, but the software powers more than 750 million devices from scores of different hardware makers.

Android accounted for 70 percent of global smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC.

That’s compared to Google’s other operating system, Chrome OS, which along with Google Apps and the Chrome browser is one of Pichai’s main projects. Chrome OS and Chromebooks have yet to catch on with mass consumers, with limited success in the education vertical so far.

Putting Pichai in charge of the far more successful Android seems a way for Page to ease redundancy and friction, a move that many consider long overdue. If Google is going to really do mobile right, it shouldn’t be placing two bets.

Google’s two operating systems do have much in common, and increasingly so. Initially the two shared little, with Chrome OS aimed at non-touch laptops and Android focused on the phone. Android had its own browser, too. More recently, though, Chrome has become the default browser on Android, Chrome OS is on both touchscreen and non-touch devices, and Android has moved from the phone to tablets, TVs and even a few clamshell devices.

Beyond assigning Pichai to lead Android with existing VP Engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer, Page has made other changes toward a cohesive mobile strategy. For instance, long-time AdWords product management director Nick Fox recently moved to work on mobile advertising projects at Android.

But as for Rubin, when you talk to people in the technology industry about leadership, they continually return to comparisons to Steve Jobs. So Wednesday was a big day for invoking the late Apple CEO.

“Andy is more like Steve Jobs in his leadership style — top down,” said Keval Desai, a former Google product management director on ads who is now a venture capitalist at InterWest Partners. “Sundar is more of a collaborative and low key leader, but very effective at achieving big results.”

Rubin had sparred with Amazon, Alibaba and other Android partners, and for some critics seemed to have a definition of “openness” that was consistent only in his own mind.

Said one former Google executive, “Everyone loves Andy, but his leadership style is not ‘Googley.’”

Meanwhile, Pichai has a history of working with partners on Google technology — back to his first gig at the company in 2004 doing toolbar distribution deals with computer makers and browsers. He also worked on Google’s antitrust efforts to make sure Google search was an option on Internet Explorer.

Still, there’s a touch of Jobs in both men — Pichai’s recent Chromebook Pixel launch was a highly stylized event to present an end-to-end Google-made device that clearly had designs on Apple.

In the past year, Scott Forstall of Apple and Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft were both muscled out, so there’s an inclination to see a parallel in Rubin’s demotion.

But while Rubin may be a top-down leader and independent thinker, he remains close to Page, sources said. “This was not acrimonious,” said one. But “perhaps it also wasn’t harmonious,” noted another.

AllThingsD’s Ina Fried contributed to this report.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130313/andy-rubin-stepping-down-as-android-head-was-sudden-but-inevitable/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130313/androids-father-wont-soon-be-forgotten/ http://allthingsd.com/20130313/androids-father-wont-soon-be-forgotten/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:56:18 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=303237

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Whatever Andy Rubin does in his next act at Google, his contributions to the mobile industry have been immeasurable.

His surprise shift away from the team and product he gave birth to leaves many unanswered questions about Google’s mobile future. Rubin’s future is unclear as well, as the memo from Larry Page says only that he will be working on “moonshots” (it’s unclear where in Google’s organization one creates moonshots, though Google X would be one logical spot.)

However, Rubin’s legacy is clear.

Before creating Android, Rubin led Danger, maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick. That phone, also known as the Hiptop, was arguably the first true smartphone, merging a phone with a real browser.

The first version, which debuted in 2002, was in black and white only, had an add-on camera with only a few pixels of resolution and felt like a bar of soap in the hand.

But it gained a huge following both among techies and teens who liked its great keyboard for texting and email.

Along with Joe Britt and Matt Hershenson (who are both now also at Google), Danger added color and other features to the phone, but struggled as a small company competing against Palm, BlackBerry, Microsoft and others.

Rubin left Danger and launched Android, the startup, which was acquired by Google in 2005. Danger itself ended up being purchased by Microsoft, where much of the remaining team worked on what became the ill-fated Kin.

And while it took years to pull off, Android became the ubiquitous phone platform that Danger had once hoped to be. From a lone initial phone, the G1, Android is now on 750 million devices (and 1.5 million more each day).

Google has tried, albeit without much success, to move Android beyond phones and tablets into all manner of other devices, from cameras to robots, and especially into audio and living room devices. Google TV, for example, is based on Android.

However, Google TV has struggled to win a place in the living room, seeing little success despite recruiting major manufacturers like Sony, LG and Logitech to build Google TV set-top boxes.

Meanwhile, the Nexus Q — an Android-powered, living-room-centric companion device for audio and video — never even made it to market.

Still, despite facing headwinds in expanding the platform beyond mobile devices, Rubin will be remembered as the man who helped wrest the stranglehold of the smartphone market away from the established giants, while ushering in a new era of mobile-focused revenue streams for Google.

Rubin appeared onstage three times at AllThingsD events. Here’s an interview with Rubin from AsiaD in 2011.

Before that, Rubin appeared at our D: Dive Into Mobile event in late 2010:

He also appeared at D@CES earlier that year.

Additional reporting by Mike Isaac

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130313/androids-father-wont-soon-be-forgotten/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130313/android-chief-andy-rubin-moves-to-other-google-projects-while-sundar-pichai-takes-over/ http://allthingsd.com/20130313/android-chief-andy-rubin-moves-to-other-google-projects-while-sundar-pichai-takes-over/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:04:03 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=303166 In a surprise announcement, Google just switched around its top leadership. Andy Rubin, the creator of Android, will no longer manage that team. Sundar Pichai, the company’s head of Chrome and Apps, is adding Android as well.

But Rubin is not leaving Google, said CEO Larry Page in a blog post today. “Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!”

In email sent to Android partners, Rubin pointed to Android’s success as a victory for openness, and said, “As for me, I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google.”

Page explained the shift as part of the maturation of Android, saying Rubin had taken the project from an independent startup to being acquired by Google to now being the operating system for more than 750 million activated devices globally.

But the transition brings back the perennial question of Google’s two operating systems, Android and Chrome OS, which are coming ever closer to one another as Google has started making touchscreen laptops.

At the launch event for the Chromebook Pixel last month, Pichai’s take on that dynamic was: “We’re comfortable at Google with two viewpoints, and we are doing both.”

In addition to being the visionary behind shaking up the international mobile device market, Rubin had built Android as his own fiefdom within Google, with sculptures of the names of its operating systems out front and a fancy Japanese cafeteria inside. It will be interesting to see how it is now absorbed into the company’s broader structure.

Pichai, meanwhile, is a nine-year veteran of Google. In 2011, he turned down an opportunity to lead product at Twitter, which seems to have only accelerated his power within Google and under Page as CEO.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130313/android-chief-andy-rubin-moves-to-other-google-projects-while-sundar-pichai-takes-over/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130221/google-makes-its-own-high-end-laptop-the-chromebook-pixel/ http://allthingsd.com/20130221/google-makes-its-own-high-end-laptop-the-chromebook-pixel/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:00:03 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=297057 Google today unveiled the Chromebook Pixel, a laptop that it designed and built itself. Unlike prior Chromebooks, whose main draw was their value, this one is built to compete with the top end of the market.

The three biggest appeals of the Pixel will likely be its touchscreen and high-density display, its elegant design, and the fact that it’s a Web-based device.

Google set out to build the best possible device for “power users living in the cloud,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP of Chrome, speaking at a launch event in San Francisco today.

Like other Chrome OS products, the Pixel does not support desktop software, and would have its users live entirely in browser windows using Web-based applications.

The Pixel, which will ship as early as next week and starts at $1,299 for a Wi-Fi-only model (more specs analysis here), evolves from previous products Google made with partners such as Samsung. But it’s a far step above them.

Most notably, the screen has more pixels per inch than any other laptop, Google said.

The focus on detail and design is unheard of for a Google product. Where the company had tiptoed into hardware before, it’s striding in wholeheartedly now.

The smooth device’s hinge gives “the feeling of a luxury car door opening and closing,” Pichai said. The touchpad is made of glass, and has been tuned with a laser to have a maximally grippy surface. There are three microphones, with an additional one set below the keyboard so typing noises can be canceled out.

At one point, a Google hardware designer at the event started waxing poetic about “tuning the force function of the mechanical keys to be more responsive.” Really.

In many ways, the Pixel is similar to Google’s Nexus device line, which sets the bar for production of Android mobile phones.

But the Pixel goes beyond that, because Nexus devices are explicitly built with hardware partners, and Google isn’t even naming the Taiwan-based OEM it is working with for the Pixel.

At the same time, this is very much a first-generation device. Some of the Pixel’s hardware capabilities — like the third microphone, and gestures on the touchscreen — aren’t even supported by Google’s own services yet.

And that’s not the only awkwardness. The Pixel brings Google back to the perpetual question of why Google is building two operating systems, Chrome and Android, that are converging on each other.

“What we are showing here is once you build a touchscreen laptop, the lines blur,” Pichai allowed. But he added, “We’re comfortable at Google with two viewpoints, and we are doing both.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130221/google-makes-its-own-high-end-laptop-the-chromebook-pixel/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121112/will-acers-200-price-tag-make-the-chromebook-more-appealing/ http://allthingsd.com/20121112/will-acers-200-price-tag-make-the-chromebook-more-appealing/#comments Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:44:14 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=268593 Acer pulled back the curtain on the next generation of its Chromebooks on Monday morning, hitting a new low price point for the line of cheap, Google-created netbook killers.

At $200, Acer’s C7 bests Samsung’s recently debuted second-gen Chromebook by 50 bucks, which could sway cost-conscious consumers.

But cutting cost corners has its drawbacks, namely in the hardware department. The C7 comes with an Intel Celeron processor and a traditional hard drive — in other words, more “old-school” components, compared to Samsung’s dual-core ARM-powered book and solid-state hard drive.

So, naturally, it raises the age-old techie question: Can you take the performance hit in order to save a few bucks up front?

For what it’s worth, the laptops aren’t meant to be your primary computer. Since Google first introduced the Chromebook at its I/O developer conference a few years ago, the company has positioned the device as an entry point to Google’s cloud services. Think “retail, enterprise, schools and call centers,” Google SVP Sundar Pichai told AllThingsD when first announcing the second-generation Chromebooks.

As an added bonus, both Acer and Samsung offer free 12-day passes to use Gogo’s in-flight Wi-Fi service, as well as two years of 100 gigabytes of free storage on Google’s Drive service. Talk about pushing customers to the cloud.

Acer’s new Chromebooks go up for sale tomorrow, available through the Google Play Web store, as well as from Best Buy retailers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121112/will-acers-200-price-tag-make-the-chromebook-more-appealing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120702/googles-wojcicki-and-pichai-on-the-full-d10-interview-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120702/googles-wojcicki-and-pichai-on-the-full-d10-interview-video/#comments Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:14:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=226603

The last interview of the 10th D: All Things Digital conference was a key one, since it featured perhaps Google’s two most important execs: Susan Wojcicki and Sundar Pichai.

Longtime exec Wojcicki — the search giant was literally founded in her garage — runs advertising products at Google, its money-gushing flagship division; Pichai’s charge is making the company’s products ubiquitous via its Chrome unit.

The pair talked about a wide range of things, from the progress of Chrome and its Android mobile offering to how it dominates the online ad market to accusations by Hollywood’s Ari Emanuel that Google is a content thief.

Here’s the video of the full interview with Walt Mossberg:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120702/googles-wojcicki-and-pichai-on-the-full-d10-interview-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120628/with-a-slew-of-app-updates-google-continues-its-crusade-for-the-enterprise/ http://allthingsd.com/20120628/with-a-slew-of-app-updates-google-continues-its-crusade-for-the-enterprise/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:34:54 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=225675 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120628/with-a-slew-of-app-updates-google-continues-its-crusade-for-the-enterprise/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/ http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:51:34 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=225663 Google introduced Chrome for iOS, offline editing for Google Docs, retail selling of Chromebooks at Best Buy, and Compute Engine on the second day of I/O 2012. And it reprised its ridiculous Google Glass live video skydiving stunt from Wednesday.

10:05 am: Things still haven’t quite kicked off yet, but ATD is here in force. Liz Gannes is on keyboard, with Mike Isaac on vocals and Ina Fried on bass.

10:06 am: Okay. Here we go. Google has a fun one-minute countdown, with numbers flying out at the audience.

Vic Gundotra takes the stage, wearing Google Glasses and another preppy sweater.

He says 2,600 people downloaded the new Google+ Android app, more than 1,000 activated “party mode,” and they contributed 13,700 photographs of Paul Oakenfold, Train and the revelry last night.

By the way, Sergey Brin is expected to make another appearance today to talk more about Google Glass. That’s slated for around 11 am PT.

10:09 am: Now for Sundar Pichai, SVP Chrome and Apps. He says his team’s recent releases have been Chrome for Android, Google Drive and Samsung Chromebooks. What’s coming next are cloud products and developer tools.

For context, Pichai says: There are 2.3 billion global Internet users, and the big growth is coming from mobile. And 20 billion network connections are projected within four years.

As of today, there are almost 310 million Chrome users, with 60 billion words typed per day, 1 terabyte downloaded, and 13 years saved per day by typing in the “omnibox” to go directly to pages. That’s up from 160 million at I/O last year.

Pichai says there’s every indication that Chrome is now the biggest browser in the world.

Pichai: “For today’s Web, we want to make sure Chrome acts as a layer so that your Web is personalized, consistent and works seamlessly across devices.”

10:14 am: Now Brian Rakowski, VP Chrome, is up to talk about using Chome between all his devices. In the morning, he reads from a bunch of Chrome tabs on his MacBook; then he runs out the door; then at work he’s testing a Chromebook that he has never used before, and can sign in to start up with his settings and his bookmarked work tabs. (For some reason, the loading of the work tabs gets a small cheer from the crowd.)

Now Rakowski has — continuing with his hypothetical retelling of a day — looked up a lunch place, and is walking over, but forgot where it is. So, on his Android phone, he launches Chrome, opens a new tab, and it shows all his recent pages. If he opens the restaurant page, the back tab still works to the page he was on back at his desk.

For a bit more on where Google is taking Chrome, check out this post.

Now Rakowski is reading on his Nexus tablet at lunch, and he shows that pages are loaded in the background so they open quickly.

10:20 am: Here we go — news! Chrome is coming to the iPhone. Later today, Chrome will roll out in the App Store. Rakowski demos features like closing tabs with a swipe, and dragging tabs from side to side.

And Chrome is also coming out for the iPad, with tabs on top because there’s more space on the tablet.

He shows that his credentials — in this case, for the New York Times — are synced across devices, even though he’d never been to nytimes.com on that device before. Nice.

Also, Incognito works on iOS. Rakowski: “I hope you’ll find that using Incognito on a touch device is a great experience.” That gets a giggle.

10:24 am: Pichai back to talk about Apps, says Gmail has 425 million users. Ten million people are using Google Drive.

Consumerization of businesses is a powerful trend, Pichai says. Many businesses are “going Google” — governments in 45 states, 66 of the Top 100 U.S. universities and more than five million businesses.

The PC architecture is about the individual workspace, not collaboration, Pichai says. “You’re just not going to get there by using SharePoint or TPS reports.” Another giggle.

Interlude for some funny videos of people writing over each other in Google Docs.

10:30 am: Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Apps, up to talk about Google Drive.

The point of the product is to make it easy to live your life in the cloud, he says. Starting today, Google Drive is available for Chrome OS and iOS.

He’s showing off searching through scanned documents with OCR. This is getting applause, but it was a feature of Google Drive at launch.

Bavor searches for “pyramid,” and gets a personal picture from a vacation to see pyramids, even though it wasn’t titled. More applause.

Drive on Chrome OS, meanwhile, is the file system, Bavor says. Everything is synced silently. He pulls up the same document on a smartphone, tablet and Chromebook, adds a lolcats pic and shows it popping up on all the devices. Couldn’t they have given him a demo buddy or two for this part?

Which brings him to a launch announcement: Starting today, Google Docs are available for editing offline.

He’s getting feedback from someone backstage in the body of his document, which is cute: “Once you’ve shown the feature, move onto the next thing!”

Now Bavor is showing apps in Google Drive. So far, this is all stuff that has already been announced, or that Google had said would be coming soon.

With the Google Drive integration that launched 10 weeks ago, Lucidchart users are creating three times more diagrams, HelloFax users are sending 25 percent more faxes, and SlideRocket users creating 3.5 times more presentations.

10:40 am: Pichai is back. He says end-to-end computing is what the Chrome OS journey is all about. A new operating system version comes out every six weeks. The newest Chromebooks are fast and smooth, with a new user experience. Again, we’ve heard all this before, but apparently Google thinks nobody was paying attention, and wants to remind its captive audience of 6,000 at Moscone.

As of today, Chromebooks are available in physical retail in 100 Best Buy stores across the U.S. Pichai had also said this was coming, but we didn’t know the retailer.

Still, we’ll take it: News!

10:43 am: Extremely early Googler Urs Hölzle joins to talk about infrastructure.

Google wants to share its network and datacenters, and launched App Engine in 2008.

App Engine now handles 7.5 billion hits per day. It’s the largest public NoSQL DataStore in the world, Hölzle says.

During a huge Japanese broadcast recently powered by App Engine, there was no impact on service.

You’ve told us you want virtual machines to run, Hölzle says. So he’s announcing Google Compute Engine, infrastructure as a service.

Institute for Systems Biology was a beta tester, Hölzle says. In its work to find relationships between genes, ISB wrote an App Engine app that connected to Compute Engine virtual machines. This kind of gene analysis requires a tremendous amount of computing. It used to take 10 minutes to see connections, but now every few seconds.

When Invite Media ported their ad server from “another cloud provider” to Compute Engine, they were able to reduce connection errors by a factor of 10.

As for the pricing: It’s 50 percent more computing per dollar than other cloud providers. That’s not very specific.

“10,000 cores — I think that’s really cool. But you know what’s really cool? We know that some of you need more scale. For computations that don’t need much I/O, we can scale much, much higher.”

In the ISB case, for example, there are 771,886 cores available to the app, as has been live-counting through the presentation. “What would you say to 770,000 cores available to your app?” Big cheers.

Hölzle shows the same ISB genome explorer computation on 600,000 cores. It’s really fast.

10:55 am: The Web platform is evolving faster than ever before, says Pichai.

Pichai is showing a high-performance, visually intense game being streamed live online to show the potential of Chrome Apps. Many gamemakers are participating, he says. The Angry Birds Chrome app alone has 140 million users.

Pichai invites two people from Cirque du Soleil onstage. It’s not skydiving, but that sounds pretty fabulous.

Oh, they’re in street clothes.

They talk about a project to bring Cirque du Soleil online to be interactive and immersive and to evoke emotion.

This is called Movi.Kanti.Revo.

The world is created in HTML, positioned in 3-D space using CSS, and very fast because of hardware acceleration, says the designer. What we’re watching is running on a Chromebook. Now we’re looking at the source code, which can be manipulated in real time as it’s running. The developer crowd here loves that we’re seeing some actual code.

You can manipulate the world just by tilting the Chromebook.

No word about when this will be available.

After a video that makes you feel all happy-sappy about the potential for the world and Chrome, Pichai says everyone here gets a Chromebox.

11:10 am: And … Sergey’s back on the roof.

He has his Google Glass on over a pair of sunglasses. There are bikers behind him doing tricks, and the airship is up above. Wait, are they just going to do yesterday’s trick again?

Brin says it’s hard to keep every camera in the Google Hangout because of the “challenging wireless environment.” The crowd laughs.

He notes that the Google Glass he’s wearing actually has “shade clip-ins.” (It is so awkward not to just write Google Glasses.)

So basically, we are reliving yesterday’s stunt with a behind-the-scenes view.

Brin is totally natural emceeing this bizarre and complicated sequence of events. Why isn’t he the public face of Google?

“Yesterday was really fun, but I was down in the auditorium,” Brin says. So, basically, we are reliving this so he can get a bigger thrill.

11:18 am: The wingsuits have opened into parachutes, and they’re about to land on the roof. Wow, that’s a tight landing.

When I wrote the intro to the liveblog, I said today’s keynote was “unlikely to match the aerial stunts of yesterday’s keynote,” but it turns out I was exactly wrong. They are just redoing everything step by step. Now onto bikes doing backflips on a ramp to get to a higher part of the roof.

(For a recap on Google Glass and what Google has and hasn’t said, check out our several posts on the topic.

Now we are watching extreme live footage of Sergey climbing stairs to get to the other side of the roof. Really.

11:25 am: At this point, I’m wondering how Google was planning to use this keynote time if its whole X Games/Rube Goldberg machine had been a failure. Would we be sitting through more recaps of products they launched in the past?

11:27 am: And that’s it. We were expecting more news about Google Maps — I guess not for today!

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• I/O Preview: Google Set This Week to Challenge Amazon, Sonos, Apple and … Oh, Just Fill in the Blank Here

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120628/liveblogging-google-io-day-2-chrome-cloud-skydiving/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120602/backstage-with-aaron-sorkin-reid-hoffman-and-sean-parker-the-katiecam-highlight-reel/ http://allthingsd.com/20120602/backstage-with-aaron-sorkin-reid-hoffman-and-sean-parker-the-katiecam-highlight-reel/#comments Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:44:36 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=215862 After three days of in-depth interviews at the D10 conference, you might think you know all about the speakers and demonstrators who graced the stage. But what are these people like when they’re not in public?

I caught up with 15 D10 guests and asked them. The results: Aaron Sorkin told me about the music he listens to when he writes, Nathan Myhrvold talked about cooking with a centrifuge, and Sean Parker told me about the book he’s reading.

Susan Wojcicki and Sundar Pichai

Tony Bates

Jon Leibowitz

John Hennessy

Quri

Ed Catmull

Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman

Aaron Sorkin

Nathan Myhrvold

True and Co.

Daniel Ek and Sean Parker

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120602/backstage-with-aaron-sorkin-reid-hoffman-and-sean-parker-the-katiecam-highlight-reel/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-vps-sundar-pichai-and-susan-wojcicki-talk-ads-chrome-and-youtube-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-vps-sundar-pichai-and-susan-wojcicki-talk-ads-chrome-and-youtube-video/#comments Thu, 31 May 2012 21:21:04 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=213620 It’s a rich time for Google: Ad revenue is up, the Chrome division will soon launch a new version of its Chromebook, and YouTube still receives hundreds of hours of video every single day. Check out Google SVPs Sundar Pichai and Susan Wojcicki in conversation with Walt Mossberg at D: All Things Digital conference.

Full D10 Conference Coverage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-vps-sundar-pichai-and-susan-wojcicki-talk-ads-chrome-and-youtube-video/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-ad-chief-susan-wojcicki-explains-why-google-gets-ads/ http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-ad-chief-susan-wojcicki-explains-why-google-gets-ads/#comments Thu, 31 May 2012 19:49:35 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=213616 There are many miraculous things on the Web today; advertising is not one of them.

So said Walt Mossberg, in conversation with Google’s Susan Wojcicki and Sundar Pichai at the D: All Things Digital conference on Thursday. But with one caveat: Google seems to serve the right ads when people want them.

“One of the things that really matters is the moment,” said Wojcicki, who is SVP of ads for the search giant. That’s ingrained into Google’s flagship product, search. Search brings intent, a focus on finding a specific thing at a specific time. “Ad information, and targeting to serve the right ad at right time, makes a difference.”

From that moment, Google’s machine-learning smart ad systems — known internally as “Smartass,” says Wojcicki — kick in, playing a key part in the system’s success at showing the most relevant ads, featured in the most prominent positions.

Google is obviously doing something right — the company raked in $8.1 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, the lion’s share of which was made from its ads business. Compare that to Facebook, whose ads are notoriously scattershot and still nascent in its online advertising strategy. So much so that General Motors pulled out of its ad deals with Facebook mere days before the company went public.

Full D10 Conference Coverage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120531/google-ad-chief-susan-wojcicki-explains-why-google-gets-ads/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20120531/even-sundar-pichais-mom-wants-to-know-why-google-has-two-operating-systems/ http://allthingsd.com/20120531/even-sundar-pichais-mom-wants-to-know-why-google-has-two-operating-systems/#comments Thu, 31 May 2012 19:45:55 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=215550 One question Sundar Pichai gets a whole lot is why Google has both Chrome OS and the ecosystem around it, including its own devices — which are under his purview — and the Android mobile operating system.

It’s gotten to the point that even his mother asked him that question, Pichai said.

When Walt Mossberg asked it at D10 today, Pichai replied that he thinks the criticism is a bit unfair. Google’s competitors like Microsoft and Apple maintain different operating systems for mobile and desktop.

“Android is extremely successful,” he said. “We couldn’t be more proud of it, and we have exciting plans with tablets, as well.”

But Chrome, Pichai said, is a “fundamentally different way of computing.” Applications and data both live in the cloud, and there’s “virtually zero administration” of the devices.

Chromebooks may not have been super successful yet, but Google has now revised the interface and will soon have more of a physical retail presence, Pichai said.

“This is a journey,” he said.

Full D10 Conference Coverage

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120531/even-sundar-pichais-mom-wants-to-know-why-google-has-two-operating-systems/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120529/new-chromebooks-google-tries-again-to-make-a-cloud-based-computer-enough/ http://allthingsd.com/20120529/new-chromebooks-google-tries-again-to-make-a-cloud-based-computer-enough/#comments Tue, 29 May 2012 19:05:19 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=213270 Google today releases new versions of its cheap personal cloud computers that promise to be much faster with a less frustrating interface. The Chromebook and Chromebox, made by Samsung, come a year after the launch of the first Chromebooks, which have not been widely adopted.

The new Chromebook is an estimated 2.5 times faster and costs $449, while the new Chromebox is 3.5 faster and costs $329. The latest interface moves away from the odd single windowpane of the early Chromebooks. There’s now support for viewing and adjusting multiple browser windows as well as saving and launching favorite Web apps and setting a desktop background — much more like a normal desktop.

Google also says Chromebook users should now be able to watch video in up to 1080p just fine.

“With the first devices we converted a few people, but this is a pretty profound shift,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Chrome and Apps, in an interview last week. Pichai is appearing onstage at our D10 conference later this week.

That may be true, but there’s still a way to go, because sometimes the online Web isn’t enough. Google is working on offline access and remote native application usage, but it’s not yet ready.

Coming in the next version of Chrome OS is support for online and offline support of the new Google Drive, which will sync with other devices. Also coming is Google Docs offline editing, which should be available “over the next several weeks,” said Pichai.

Lastly, Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop app allows users to connect to their regular machines should they wish to use a certain piece of desktop software (Pichai labeled these “legacy applications”).

Remote Desktop is in beta — in fact, all caps “BETA” in all the Google materials — but in the demo I saw there was pretty remarkable fidelity as Google Product Management Director Caesar Sengupta manipulated photos in Adobe Lightroom on his laptop left on at home, directly from a Chromebook browser window.

Another coming feature that should help users trying to live fully in the browser is a new unified notification interface, similar to what you’d see on a mobile phone, Pichai and Sengupta said.

So who will buy these devices? Chromebooks and Chromebox will likely have an audience with “power Google users,” said Pichai, as well as enterprises, schools, call centers, point of sale and retail. Google will step up its physical retail presence toward the end of this year, and it also plans to release quite a few more Chrome OS devices in the fourth quarter. On that forward-looking note, Pichai said the new OS is optimized for touchscreens.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120529/new-chromebooks-google-tries-again-to-make-a-cloud-based-computer-enough/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120424/sundar-pichai-google-drive-is-about-context-where-competitors-are-about-files/ http://allthingsd.com/20120424/sundar-pichai-google-drive-is-about-context-where-competitors-are-about-files/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:19:34 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=199554

Sundar Pichai

In advance of the release of Google Drive, I sat down yesterday with Google SVP of Chrome and Apps Sundar Pichai and Google Drive product head Scott Johnston. I asked them to elaborate on how Google Drive emerged from within Google, how the product compares to the competition, and where they see it evolving.

What’s ironic is that Pichai was the guy who helped kill a previous product called Google Drive, or GDrive, as detailed in Steven Levy’s “In the Plex”:

Google was about to launch a project it had been developing for more than a year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in charge of the project, and said, “I don’t think we need GDrive anymore.” Horowitz asked why not. “Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we need files anymore.”

Pichai is still not a fan of files — in fact, his criticism of Dropbox and others is that they’re all about file management –  but he’s come around on “having data available in context.” Here’s an edited transcript of our chat from yesterday:

Liz Gannes: With Google Drive, you’re straddling distinctions between personal and organizational use, and personal storage versus sharing. As a user of Google Docs, Dropbox and others, I often get confused across that juncture about who can see things. How do you design for that?

Sundar Pichai: We strongly believe in the consumerization of the enterprise, and that’s the pillar of all our Google Apps strategy. At work and at home, we try to bring the same set of products. There’s some work in bridging the shift, but examples like the iPad bridge it pretty well. We have good controls in place — an admin can control when you’re using Drive within a company — but it’s an area we can do a lot more in.

Who can see what’s in my Google Drive folder?

Scott Johnston: This is a big shift, in that, really, the Google Drive folder is yours. Only things go in there that you create or that you move there explicitly. There’s a new “shared with me” view, and then you can move them into your Drive if you want. So it’s really this space that you control.

Do you see people using their Google Drive as their backup for everything?

Pichai: It’s a good question. I’m probably not the best representative use case, but the first time I got my access, I put my family pictures there, for safety and peace of mind. I don’t think that problem is well-solved today, so having a very safe, secure place to store, which is cost-affordable, I think is a good opportunity. We also really want people to have data anytime, anywhere.

So — yes?

Pichai: Yes, it’s a long way of saying yes.

What’s the team that created this project? I know Google Drive had been “killed” internally before, but what about this group?

Scott Johnston

Johnston: I came onboard Google in 2006 when we were acquired at JotSpot, and joined the Docs team. On that team, as we got better and better at collaboration on different file types, we started seeing them more and more in our everyday life; for planning a birthday party or, internally, our designers were constantly sharing mocks. And it was this idea of getting out of the way of the user so they don’t have to think about where their stuff is, and they can just do what they’re trying to do. It was a natural evolution of Docs. This is just more touchpoints to access your data.

Is there continuity with previous Google Drive products?

Pichai: What Scott’s talking about, Google Drive as an evolution of Docs, is one thing. Early on, we had a project called Google Drive that was completely different.

What was different?

Pichai: There was a very traditional file system approach, a long time ago, having nothing to do with Google Docs. It was pre-mobile, pre-tablet, with deep integration into My Documents and Windows, et cetera. So it was very different.

Why is this a good product now?

Pichai: Today, when I look at different solutions out there, those are still in the old metaphor of “here are files that you want, manage them.” This is about you living your life online — planning a wedding, buying a house — and having your data available in that context. I think it’s a big pivot, and that’s what excites me and makes it a good product. It’s in the natural flow.

I wouldn’t underestimate the fact that you can use it not just with Google but with third-party applications over time will be a big differentiator. And third is, deep search is very powerful. There is a lot of deep computer science in there, the fact that you can comment on any file type, that there’s full-text indexing with optical character recognition, all that happens magically with our infrastructure.

Johnston: There’s also being able to offer up to 16 terabytes of storage per user.

It’s kind of unusual for you to ask consumers to pay for Google products, right?

Pichai: Today, people are paying for Gmail and Picasa storage. For power users, it is popular. We’ve kind of made it very hard for you to do, but [Google Drive] is very easy. When you do upgrade here, your Gmail automatically goes up to 25 gigs. Over time, given how much Google Apps are the center of many users’ life, and you want to store safely and securely, I think it’s a good model and it’s a pretty good deal.

I know you’ve been working on Google Drive, in various iterations, for a long time. Why are you releasing it now, especially if some key parts are not done?

Pichai: We wanted all of this to be done — iOS, Gmail, etc. We picked a schedule and, like, 18 things made the train, and two got left out, but they will get added in after. The fact that Gmail got delayed and G+ made it, I wouldn’t have known a month ago.

Is this like the Chrome browser, where you guys promised a Mac version was coming soon, and then it took a couple years?

Pichai: Sorry about that. We dramatically underestimated what it would take to do Chrome on the Mac. IOS is a very different story. It works today. IOS is 98 percent done, and it will be here soon.

No matter what you say or launch, the takeaway is going to be, “Google launches Dropbox competitor.” What do you make of the competitive landscape?

Pichai: I think if we wanted to do it, we would have approached it very differently. We’ve gone to great lengths to built it around an online application experience. We want this to be about creating and collaborating — and your data is there for you. I think others have taken a file/data approach, and saying you have [access to] that everywhere. It’s nuanced, but I think it’s very different.

And for an active Google user, the integration we provide is very valuable. [As for Dropbox,]  I think the work they’ve done is great. This is a secular shift in terms of how people are living in the cloud, and I think it’s good to have innovation in the space.

Are we going to see TV ads for this?

Pichai: Not that I know of.

Johnston: The Super Bowl’s a long time from now.

Pichai: If the Niners make it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120424/sundar-pichai-google-drive-is-about-context-where-competitors-are-about-files/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120424/meet-google-drive-specs-and-screenshots/ http://allthingsd.com/20120424/meet-google-drive-specs-and-screenshots/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:30:43 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=199464 Google Drive launches today as a revamped version of Google Docs, with greatly improved storage and accompanying software. Google has had a serious case of amateur hour while trying to keep this product a secret, but now people can stop speculating and start seeing if this is something they want to use.

Google Drive will start being available to some users today, and it will roll out globally “over the next several weeks,” said a spokeswoman.

Walt Mossberg has a thorough review, and I also have an interview with Chrome and Apps SVP Sundar Pichai and Google Drive product manager Scott Johnston that I’ll publish soon. But for the sake of setting them out clearly, here are some of the basic Google Drive specs:

• Each Google Drive includes 5 gigabytes of free storage. Docs created with Google don’t count against that limit.
• Users can pay for up to 16 terabytes of storage — 25GB for $2.49 per month, 100GB for $4.99, 1TB for $49.99, 16TB for $799.99 — with many levels in between. Drive will also be included for enterprise Google Apps users as part of their pricing structure.
• Drive is available for Web, Mac, PC and Android phones and tablets. The team showed me a working version on an iPad, and said iOS would be available very soon.
• Drive is the new Docs. For users who have Drive on their accounts, docs.google.com will start redirecting to drive.google.com. All of users’ Google Docs are automatically imported into their Drives.
• In addition to creating regular Google Docs files, users can install apps through the Chrome Web Store. The 18 launch partners include HelloFax (faxes), Balsamiq (mock-ups), Lucidchart (diagrams), DocuSign (signatures), SlideRocket (presentations) and MindMeister (mind maps).
• There are lots of ways to sort and view files, including an activity stream of all the most recently modified documents that you have access to, and a grid view that shows thumbnails.
• Users can also search across all their files, with image recognition and optical character recognition automatically applied to new pictures and scanned documents so they can be more easily searched even if they don’t have much metadata.
• When users click to add a photo in Google+, they’ll now have the option of taking it directly from their personal Google Drives. Google Drive will also be available for attachments in Gmail, but not at launch.
• There are chat conversations associated with every file, where users get notified whenever someone leaves a new comment.

View the slideshow

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120424/meet-google-drive-specs-and-screenshots/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120316/google-apps-vp-dave-girouard-leaving-to-start-a-company/ http://allthingsd.com/20120316/google-apps-vp-dave-girouard-leaving-to-start-a-company/#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:59:19 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=187303 Dave Girouard, who is Google’s VP of apps, is leaving the company, Google said today.

Girouard had been responsible for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and other cloud applications.

After eight years at Google, Girouard plans to start his own company, though not in the enterprise space. Google Ventures will be investing in his start-up, alongside Kleiner Perkins and NEA.

(Update: Girouard’s new company is called Upstart, with the tagline “The Startup is You.” According to a splash page, “Upstart lets you raise capital in return for a small portion of your future income.”)

Meanwhile, back at the Goog, Girouard’s responsibilities will transfer to Sundar Pichai, leader of the Chrome and apps team. Pichai is one of Google CEO Larry Page’s septumvirate of product heads, who were established when he took over the company last April. Part of Pichai’s agenda has been to lessen the divide between enterprise apps and consumer apps.

Departures by long-time Googlers are surprisingly rare. Google’s first employee, Craig Silverstein, left to join Khan Academy last month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120316/google-apps-vp-dave-girouard-leaving-to-start-a-company/feed/ 0