Google IO is the most expected conference for anyone that follows the Google Ecosystem, every year they announce the current path of Google, new projects, or research projects.
Here I write my notes of all announcements and some of my own comments
Pre-show
As usual we have a pre-show before the Keynote, for this year the band invited was tUnE-yArDs to play with Blob Opera a Google Experiment, using Machine Learning and in real time to follow the band music. We were delighted by some nice tunes. Creating music with Machine Learning is not the first time at a Google IO but it is indeed getting better with the time.
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Keynote Sundar Pichai
With the concert ending we are moved outside where Sundar Pichai, from the campus in Mountain View, talks to a small group of people on the outside. The first topic to start is a comment regarding the Pandemic and how Google tries to help, Student and Teachers, small business, and nonprofits.
For more information you can go to http://g.co/covid19relief
Convinced that Technology is to help reach the correct information to anyone.
The mission Building a more helpful Google for everyone.
150 thousand kilometers of bike routes.
Eco friendly routes is the new map type coming, followed by the announcement of “Safer routing”, to help drivers find the best route and reach the destination save.
150 Million users Globally have used Google Classroom.
K12 Education is the number #1 education platform together with Chromebook
With people working from home, Google workspace has been evolving and so Sundar announces Smart Canvas.
Smart Canvas - Javier Soltero
Javier starts talking about Smart Canvas, a continuation of the work of Google Workspace. Smart Canvas is the next step focused on working remotely.
A nice demo is shown and as soon as the video is released, I’ll add it here.
With Smart Canvas, the google meet will be integrated and in one click we can invite our colleagues to collaborate to work with us in our Smart Canvas.
Companion mode is the new mode joining Google Meet. Noise Cancelation, Machine Learning to adjust camera zoom and lighting Customized views will be also added, when someone is presenting he can rearrange the videos of others, at the same time as with live translation.
Seems Google Meet will be more fluid to use, and I’m quite hype for it.
Advancing AI - Sundar Pichai
Translation
More than 100 languages and 20 billions pages have been translated last year alone, and has increased 4 times more than years before. Advances in Image Recognition since 2014 led to Google Photos in which we can see all our memories. Google Lens now has OCR capable of calculating mathematical functions.
Live caption is widely 250K hours every day are processed that helps Wave Net to turn it more precise and improve the access of information to millions
Sundar continues mentioning all the improvements in all machine learning models and their capability of understanding natural language, even still we hear the Google Assistant saying “Sorry I didn’t understand”.
Natural Language is easy to understand to any of us but for the machine is a huge challenge and is important to improve so that we are able to have sensitive conversation
LamBDA
The new language model for dialog application, in open domain, which means it can converse on any topic and it has been applied internally.
Sundar presents an impressive demo using LamBDA, a conversation between Pluto and a person.
Breaking how it learned, it Learned by Concepts, it was not given by hand but it keeps the conversation open ended. It is possible to change the conversation but keep the same model. A new conversation demo with a Paper plane is shown and it is quite impressive.
Lets now see how much is a demo and what is really capable, as soon as we have an online demo I’ll share it here. Sundar does mention it is still in early research. We might not see a live demo soon.
They do still need to adapt LamBDA to Google’s value and how to provide it to developers. Also because this is still only working with text.
Search videos
Soon we will be able to interact with videos with voice to search parts of a video and it quite interesting. To be able to search a video for a specific part.
TPU V4
The new version of TPU announced 4.096 Chips in each Pod. This means an extra 10^18 of computing power, an extra exflop of computing power. All this with 90 percent carbon-free.
Quantum Computing
A short introduction a quantum computing is still too fragile but they are actively advancing this to be able to have Error-corrected quantum computation and a Quantum AI Campus, the new office
Erik Lucero presents the new campus to show the inside of a quantum computer. Basically a fridge to protect the computer so it does not affect unwanted electricity fields and anything that can affect it even from space. Cryostat is shown painted with a Bob Ross painting.
We are now in the first milestone with the new campus, and the next step is Error-corrected logic qubit, with the following step the Error Corrected Quantum Computing.
Auto-delete
Is now set by default and after 18 month unless told to do it sooner.
They want to follow the principals
- Secure by default
- Private by design
- You’re in Control
Jen Fitzpatrick
Goal is a password free world. Four new improvements to get this goal, PAssword manager.
Password Manager, will have the following updates.
- Import Password to import from other password managers.
- Depher integration of Chrome and Android.
- Automatic Password alerts, of password leaks
- Quick fix in Chrome, to fix that moves to the compromised account and helps change your password.
Jen, still reinforced that Google does not sell our data, and will want to give us more control of all of our data and how they will better explain how they got certain information from us, such as places that they remember in Google maps of a place we went last year.
Multitask Unified Model (MUM) - Prabhakar Raghavan
MUM - Multitask Unified Model, 1000x better than BERT, trains on 75+ languages, generates languages, Acquires deep world knowledge, and understands multiple modalities.
Given an example it will be able to distinguish in a text two different mountains, for example. All this to help us, for example, how to prepare for a trip to Mount Fuji. MUM helps non Japanese speakers to understand information and translate it to us and ask for example, take a picture of boots and ask “Are these boots suited for Mount Fuji” and recommend you better gear on a translated Blog.
Google Lens
Google Lens translates 1 Billion words everyday.
We are transitioning to a video of a 9th grade student how he can use Google Lens in his studies, in Indonesia. Uses the Google Lens to translate the Google Paper and see how to solve it.
Google Lens - AR
Now we can search for models of athletes in AR.
Credibility of Information - About this Result
“About this Result” is a new feature in search to learn about the website and this month will be rolled out to all english searches. It will help us understand
- How the site describes itself
- What other sources are saying
- Related articles
Google Maps - Liz Reid
100 + improvements in AR.
3 years ago we were presented with Live View. Today is still the only company with it.
Now we will be able to use anywhere where we are in Google Maps, it will match what the camera sees with the information on the map. It will also show key landmarks and key, and indoors to help navigate in Airport, train stations, but only for a few cities at first.
Detailed Street Maps
We will be able to see crosswalks and sidewalks. This will be announced only in 50 cities of the world. Now this is interesting to
Google Map will also highlight the results on the map depending on the time of the day or even if you are in a new city. So for example if it is 8AM it will show coffee shops or in a new city, it will show you parks.
Area business
We will be able not only to see how busy a place is but now we will be able to see how an Area is Busy too. You’ll be able if a place in a city is too crowded.
Shopping Graph - Bill Ready
Bill announce Shopping Graph to bring together websites, prices, reviews, videos and SKU & Inventory Data directly from the seller. All to help find what we want to buy from a border seller.
Lens, Search, Photos, Youtube & Chrome.
From the google search, with Lens we will be able to point to an item and see where we can buy the chair.
This means that we will start to see offers of products everywhere in all products. He also presents some collaborations with retailers.
While this will for sure help finding products I predict we will be more spammed by products.
An interesting statistic is that there was an increase of 80% of sellers.
A big collaboration with Shoppify that all their products will be immediately added to Shopping Graph
Google Photos - Shimrit Ben-Yair
Shimrit is here to talk about Google Photos and features. How with the increase number of photos gets harder and harder to find what we want to re-live
Little Patterns
A new feature that uses Machine Learning to identify how images are similar and identify patterns between 3 or more photos and it marks it as a pattern. Patterns like, hiking trip a DIY work you did on the weekend.
Cinematic Photos
To grab our photos and make them more immersible, and it is normal when we take a photo we take more photos, so Cinematic Photos will grab all the photos and create frames in between and create a short video. This is an incredible feature.
Edit Photos
Google got feedback from people that want to edit photos in Google Photos so that moments hard in life can be edited out, moments of loss, break or life changes. So starting today will be easier to edit all information
Material You - Matías Duarte
2014 was announced Material Design. How about today?
Announcing Material You, you can edit all pallets for you, a new design that adapts to you and how you use your applications you interact.
Basically is a material design that adapts to mood, light and you select your own Material Design that will be applied to all environments. Web, smart displays, apps, everywhere with the same Design.
Android 12 - Sameer Samat
The most personal Design ever. So delightful! A video as shown of the new Android 12 UI.
Milestone: 3 Billion Android Devices around the world, more than Java.
Android 12 has the following focus:
- Smartphones are personal
- Private and secure
- Better Together
New UI / Design
Lock screen to Settings will all be updated. By using color extraction, this means when we change the background image the system creates a custom palette based on the colors of the photo. Machine learning to find what colors better fit together and the result demo shows it really looks good. We will be able to see this in this Fall.
Light is more well used, starting on the bottom, from the touch and more crisp use.
Quick Settings now will have Google Pay and Home functions. Google assistant will be able to be triggered by the power button.
22 % performance in CPU in the new Android 12
Privacy & Security - Suzanne Frey
Suzanne comes to talk about security in Google and how they are working to keep the best phone and more secure in the market. They recognize how data is sensible so they announce a new Dashboard.
Privacy Dashboard
The new dashboard to see where our data is being collected, it will be easier to disable sensors for all apps or simply see what apps are collecting from us.
Private Compute Core (Open Source)
Safe, private, local to our phone. Now Playing, Smart Reply are features from this core, all of it is exclusively used in the phone and disconnected from the network.
Multi-Device World - Sameer
Delightful and helpful, better Together. With a simple tap we will be able to unlock the Chromebook and from the Chromebook we will be able to access our phone photos.
The phone will have a nice remote to control our TV (Google TV) in fact Android Auto will be able to also interact with these actions with Android Auto Wireless
Digital Car Key
NFC, Ultra wideband technology, we will be able to share our keys with a different driver all from our phone.
Android Beta 1 available today (May 18 2021)
So we can test all features that are coming
Smartwatch new updated
- Unified Platform
- New consumer Experience
- World-class health and fitness (with fitbit)
There is a strong partnership with Samsung, Wear OS with Tizen for better usability but more importantly Longer Battery life, so we can track our BPM while saving battery.
Samsung - Patrich Chomet
Head of Customer at Samsung, to talk about all the innovations and they will apply the latest feature on their new wearables.
SmartWatches- Bjorn Kilburn
Navigation
New navigation quickly switches between apps, like in between Strava and Spotify, through a simple tap.
Tiles
New Tiles created custom to us,
New Design features
- Turn by turn
- Google Pay
- Download music in Music app even without the phone
Fitbit - James Park
James takes the stage to talk about the history of Fitbit and how they are bringing more features.
Android 12 - Features & Closing remarks - Sameer Samat
All the features mentioned here will be released this Fall with the new Android 12 version.
Inclusive Camera
To make the camera more active and inclusive, because currently and historically it didn’t account for people of color. Google has been working with experts so that the camera captures better skin tones. Auto white balance will better and accurately capture the difference between curly hair and the background for a better image capture. This will come with Android 12.
Image Recognition - Dr Karen DeSalvo
Helpful Google for everyone.
Breast Cancer, half women, over the years, get false positives, so Google Image Recognition collaborates with experts to help better fit the screening process.
Waiting for the result of a mammogram is nerve wrecking and it can take days or even weeks to get an answer. Google wants to use AI to flag better cases and act faster.
Submit Photos of symptoms
You will be able to take photos of your skin to help identify any problems you might have. 288 skin conditions, including 90% of searched conditions. This will be available in the EU at the end of this year.
Sundar Pichai
Last year we spent a lot time in video conference so they want to improve it, so Sundar starts talking about some research projects
Project Startline
A sneak peak of a new way of communicating, it showed a demo of a video conferencing with extremely high quality but its not it.
Take a 3D Image to make a real time real model of the person so that it gives us the feeling that the person is right in front of us.
Carbon Free Goal
2007 First major company to become carbon neutral 2014 First major company to achieve 100% renewable energy 2030 First major company to operate 24/7 carbon free
5 Data centers are already carbon free. One in Denmark that is 90% carbon-free of the time
Carbon-Intelligent Computing Platform
Launched last year to adapt the computing to focus their resources over the day to better use the renewable energy
Geothermal
Google is partnering with more projects in Nevage to take advantage of the geothermal energy to reach the goal and use this energy in border places.
New Buildings
- Dragonscale roof to better absorb solar energy
- Pillars to use geothermal energy
With this last message of clean energy Sundar Pichai closes the Keynote.