Google I/O 2017: Five Big Announcements from Google
Google announced its competition to Amazon
Echo last year, and since then has been updating it with new features regularly. Recently, it got the
ability to add multiple profiles to Home, and now it has announced more features
at I/O 2017. Powered by Google Assistant, Google Home can now schedule
appointments and make hands-free calls as well. Furthermore, Assistant is also
improved in many areas to work better on phones and Google Home as well.
Google Home improvements
Beginning with Google Home improvements, it
can now schedule calendar appointments, and soon you’ll also be able to add
reminders as well. Google is also rolling out the ability to make hands-free
calls in the coming months only in the US and Canada. This feature will let you
call mobile phones and landline via Google Home, for free (neat!).
Google Assistant will now support more than 70
smart home partners like TP-Link, Honeywell, Logitech, GE Appliances, and LG.
Spotify, Soundcloud, and Deezer are also coming to Google Home. Interestingly,
Google is also adding Bluetooth support on Google Home to play audio from any
Android or iOS device in the future. Talking about entertainment, HBO NOW, CBS
All Access, and HGTV are all coming to Google Home as well.
Interestingly, Android Police also spotted the arrival of
user-defined customized shortcuts in the Google Home app. There are some
default ones like ‘workout time’, ‘late again’, and much more already added by
Google, but it also lets you make your own shortcut if you prefer.
Google Assistant improvements
Google Assistant is also getting better with time,
and at I/O, the tech giant introduced the arrival of something known as
‘Proactive Assistance’ and visual responses. What Assistant will do is give you
responses, in the form of visuals, on TVs with Chromecast connection. Questions
like “what's on YouTube TV right now?” or “what's on my calendar today?” will
get visual responses on the big screen.
Proactive Assistance is essentially prior
notifications based on your appointments and events for the day. So for
example, if there is traffic on your route to an appointment, Google Home will
let you know with a prior notification that you need to leave early as there is
traffic on the way. These notifications won’t just blurt out of the speaker
without warning. Google Home will light up letting you know that it has an
alert for you, and activating it will then give permission to Google Home to
speak.
Assistant is also getting image search in the
coming months. Calling it Google Lens, you’ll be able to learn more things
around you, by just opening the camera and clicking on the Lens button. “If you
see a marquee for your favourite band, you can hold up your Assistant, tap the
Lens icon and get information on the band, tickets and more,” Google notes on
its blog.
Of course, another major announcement was that
Google Assistant is now available for iOS. Another addition was the inclusion
of typing input, and the company is also touting improvements in conversational
abilities. The tech giant also announced that Google Home will be launched in
Australia, Canada, France, Germany and Japan later in the year. The Assistant
will soon also roll out to eligible Android phones in Brazilian Portuguese,
French, German and Japanese, and by the end of the year the Assistant will
support Italian, Korean, and Spanish.
Five big
announcements from Google I/O
1.
Google Lens
It will be a while before Google Lens is
available, but today it was the centrepiece of the keynote.
The app uses image recognition to identify
objects appearing in your camera lens in real-time. It means you can point a
smartphone at a flower and be told exactly what it is.
Or, and this feature drew a massive cheer
here, you can point it at the sticker on the back of a wifi router - the one
containing the long password you need to enter - and the app will know it’s a
wifi password and automatically connect you to the network without the need for
manual input.
Other uses could be pointing it at a
restaurant and getting instant reviews or menus, or even scanning a menu in a
different language, having it translated, and being able to ask “what does that
dish look like?” and be shown a photograph of the meal.
Google didn’t have a date for when Google Lens
would be available. It did say it would be part of its assistant and photos app
at first - though seems to me the most useful way of offering it might be to
just integrate it into the camera app.
2. A standalone
Daydream headset
Google announced its Daydream virtual reality
(VR) platform here last year, along with a nice-looking (but uncomfortable, for
me at least) headset that you could slip a smartphone in to create a budget VR
experience.
A couple of big announcements on the Daydream
front. First, the new Samsung Galaxy devices will work with Daydream. An
interesting development because until now Samsung devices worked only with Gear
VR, an alternative headset that ran the Oculus VR, owned by Facebook.
Samsung manufactures the Gear VR, and so
allowing its smartphones to be compatible with Daydream could hobble its own
product. It seems Samsung cares more about making sure the Galaxy is the phone
of choice, and cares far less about selling cheap headsets.
Google also announced it would be launching
two standalone Daydream headsets that wouldn’t require you to add a smartphone
in order to make it work.
It is partnering with HTC - which already
makes the high-end Vive VR headset - and Lenovo to make the devices. No release
date as yet. The headsets will use location tracking technology that means they
will be able to detect when you’re walking around (rather than forcing you to
stay in one place as current budget models do).
"Daydream has had a challenging start,” remarked
Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight.
"Google will hope that a dedicated
headset with superior performance will help to further expand the market but
the real challenge remains a lack of content.”
As well as VR, we saw some experiments with AR
- Augmented Reality - that brought the fledgling technology to the classroom.
3.
Very clever photo tools
Google’s Photo app now has 500 million users,
its secret sauce being the use of machine learning to sort through your
pictures and understand what they contain - such as seeing a birthday cake and
grouping pictures from the same day as “birthday party”.
The next step is to help you share your
pictures more easily. During the keynote, Google discussed how people often
take a lot of pictures but then don’t end up doing anything with them.
Using facial recognition, Google Photos will
now spot, say, your mate Bob and automatically suggest you send the picture, or
a group of them, straight to Bob. The idea is to remove a little of the
friction with photo-sharing.
Shared Libraries takes this a step further,
allowing you to share, for example, any picture of your kids automatically with
your partner. The software will recognize the faces and create the album for
you. If that sends some privacy-related shivers down your spine, Google assured
everyone there would be no unexpected sharing of pictures you want to keep
secret. We’ll see.
Using machine learning and AI (noticing a
pattern here?) the app will also remove unwanted objects from pictures, for when
something ugly spoils a good shot.
4. VPS - visual positioning system
Most of us are familiar with GPS - global
positioning system - but that technology can only get you so far. Though
terrific for traveling around large areas outside, GPS has real limitations
when you need something more accurate.
Google thinks VPS - visual positioning system
- is how to fill that gap. Using Tango, a 3D visualization technology, VPS
looks for recognizable objects around you to work out where you are, with an
accuracy of a few centimeters.
Google’s head of virtual reality, Clay Bavor,
said one application would be using VPS to find the exact location of a product
in a large shop.
"GPS can get you to the door,” said Mr
Bavor on stage, "and then VPS can get you to the exact item that you’re
looking for”.
The problem at the moment - and it’s a big one
- is that barely any smartphones currently have Tango technology, and so even
if VPS was ready today, few people would be able to use it. Lenovo released a
Tango-enabled device last year, and another is due sometime in 2017.
5. A better Google Home (and Assistant
on the iPhone)
Google Home, the company’s standalone
assistant, has made a modest start but still lags behind Amazon’s Alexa device.
Google announced a few new features designed
to plug that gap. First is calling - you can now make phone calls using the
Home, and its voice recognition capabilities make it possible for different
family members to call from their own separate numbers through the same Home
device.
The device will also now offer proactive
information, rather than just answers to questions you have asked. The example
given on stage was a warning about heavy traffic - by referencing Google
Calendar the assistant was able to know that the user needed to be somewhere at
a certain time, and that traffic on the way was heavy.
“Proactive assistance” treads a very fine line
- these devices currently work on a speak-when-spoken-to basis, and everyone
would like to see it remain that way.
Google is also releasing an SDK - software
development kit - to allow third-party developers to integrate Google’s
assistant into their own products. This comes in response to Amazon doing the
same with Alexa.
For me, this intensifies my number one
complaint with Google Home: that you have to say “Ok, Google” to wake it up. As
I’ve written in the past, it’s a nasty, awkward interaction, and that will feel
even worse when using any of the new products in the pipeline. Change it,
please!
Also significant is Google’s decision to bring
its app to the iPhone, rather than just Android users. As someone here quipped,
it might have iPhone users saying: “Hey Siri, open up Google assistant.”
Via
NDTV, BBC
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