Google I/O 2016 Live Keynote
events.google.com
events.google.com
Yeah they sure do like starting new messaging projects don't they
Which do I use, even if I am a Google fan and love all things Google?
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/introducing-spaces-t...
It's roughly analogous to Facebook Groups.
The pattern is pretty clear, one way to drive traffic and ad revenue for the company is to create ways that get you to use Google before you use the platform's chosen search provider, if you do it in Apps you get the "bonus" that you both get the traffic and you don't have to provide the platform provider for sending search traffic your way.
The way this plays out is going to pretty interesting. It gets really interesting if Apple deploys their own web search capability and starts freezing out apps that have a search component and don't use theirs (like the Microsoft phone ecosystem was rumored to do).
Really challenging environment for Google to be in. I'll be expecting lots of similar sorts of things from them in the future.
- Bound to a phone number.
- Limited to a single mobile device (can't use a tablet or a second phone).
- Limited to a Chrome extension.
The first two are the larger of my problems as phone numbers are far from permanent and I routinely use multiple Android devices.
I just don't understand how there are so many messaging applications that involve encryption and manage to mess up at least one major feature.
Telegram: e2e is off by default, encryption is homegrown, requires a phone number (although only for initial setup).
Signal: No multi-device, requires a phone number.
WhatsApp: Linked entirely to a phone.
Tox: Uses P2P nonsense that destroys mobile battery.
Why is it so hard to make an app that is:
- Secure.
- Not linked to a phone in any way.
- Mobile ready, with working push notifications.
- Available on multiple devices.
- Easy to use.
- Free.
What do you want me to use, Google? Hangouts? Messenger? Allo? Duo? Wave-- er, Spaces?
All the journalists buzz around, and all the product managers/execs/reps are there to show off for them.
For example, when I went, the wi-fi was horrible, basically unusable - except if you were in media. If you were media, then you got your own area to connect to better internet.
That said, the subsequent days were noticeably quiet in comparison.
Not too many people there to actually go to dev talks, etc. It's very relaxed by then.
This seems cool. Echo is pretty neat but this space could use some competition.
["available later this year"]
Ah, so it's doomed. Those four words are a death sentence, particularly from Google's hardware department.
Is no one worried at all?
Google is a different story. I imagine that they would try to sell a device that listens 100% of the time and targets ads at you based on what you talk about. Google makes money by selling ads, not by making buying stuff convenient. Their incentive is different.
Ideally, I'd love for Apple to create such a device, but it won't be open, would cost an arm and a leg, and would probably use Siri, which lags behind the Echo in what it can do by quite a bit now.
I think the rest of your post is conjecture, but does this change your opinion? Amazon is a diverse business that wants to sell many things, including your eyeballs (or ears in the case of Echo) to others via advertising.
Second, sure Amazon does ads on the side, but the majority of their money is made by selling their own products. Occam's Razor suggests that they simply want to sell you stuff using one more way. Notice that the Echo didn't do almost anything when it was initially released, except allowing you to buy stuff. That was the part that they worked out before launching it.
Also, don't forget that Amazon also has a number of other devices that are very similar: the Dash button and Amazon Fresh come to mind. The Echo fits nicely in line with it.
I am not saying they couldn't use it for something nefarious: they could definitely abuse it. I just think that they have less incentive to do so than Google.
It's not like there's a law of physics requiring that always be true, you're trusting that to:
A) Be true now, and B) Keep being true in the future.
And it's the sort of claim that is very very easy to lie about.
State adversaries are a different story. I don't doubt the NSA might somehow break into Snowden's Echo, but most people don't have such adversaries.
(I mean, what the hell - deep in the options of Google Now I can actually allow the phone to be unlocked by my voice - but if and only if it is plugged to a charger. They had to explicitly code in a special condition to make Google Now less useful.)
(and yes, I know you meant other kind of "always listening")
State adversaries have repeatedly demonstrated a desire to "collect it all" and sort it out later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
The entire emphasis of what Snowden revealed was precisely that the method employed by the NSA were not targeted.
They always listen but only execute when they hear the triggering phrase.
Otherwise they'd never hear the trigger...
Whether they locally store what they hear prior to the trigger is the concern. I doubt they do but technically it's not challenging.
I can't tell if this is satire.
I get that better ad targeting may not seem like much of an issue at first thought, and may even seem like a benefit, but I'd suggest that the perceived benefits may start to unravel if you consider it from a different point of view.
Companies that are involved in delivering targeted advertising are basing what ads to show you on the profile they're building up about you and what they perceive as similar people to you. The idea being to give you more of what they think you'll like. What this leads to is a filter bubble. When you're in a filter bubble (and I'd argue most of us are), the culture you're exposed to is increasingly limited by your past likes and dislikes, increasingly tailored based on market demographics, far less likely to broaden your range of experience.
We shouldn't welcome the filter bubble, we should act to break out of it, and resisting the mechanisms behind targeted ads is one such way of doing so.
I do, but I know that sentiment is not widely shared on HN.
Enabling state spying would destroy people's trust, and hence their business. I think Google is highly motivated to keep your data private.
Do you think devices like this have no remote vulnerabilities, that nation states don't have the resources to find and exploit them, or that they can but don't?
Question: "Jason you don't worry about the data Alexa is collecting on you and your conversations that you're having unwittingly around this device?
Answer: "Your privacy is an Illusion, uhh it's been gone for many years, the NSA is listening to any coversation it wants to through your phone already. So the idea that we have any privacy at this point is sort of laughable... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9fnY5rIjb4
In case you are wondering he's bullish on the Echo and Amazon
I don't know single person in Europe who uses his Android smartwatch after couple of months!
Strava Android app runs a GoogleNowAuthentication Service 24/7. I stopped using the app last year, installed in in April 2016, saw it's still happening and hit them an email to support. I never got a non-automated response.
I'm very enthusiastic that apps include various Google additions that are no use to me, but run 24/7. /s Maybe that's how we're going to "need" 6GB RAM phones.
I used it every day and until a software update broke it (it run into infinite loop of crashing Play services). I sent it to warranty and Motorola reinstalled the OS but in meantime I used my old, classic watch. It turned out I didn't miss 360. Other people I know have similar stories.
Hopefully the platform is still alive. Does anyone develop apps for Android Watch? AFAIR there is no special category in Google Play for this.
Machine learning to one-hit reply "Cute dog"? Billions of dollars and these features seem pretty boring.
This Allo app doesn't solve the problem of people (that actually means all people you talk to) having to opt into it.
> "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay
Yeah, developers hate maintenance and improving existing products, but for users having 12 chat apps is really annoying.
In the example Google showed us, a graduation photo came
through. The suggested replies were along the lines of
"Congratulations!" and "You look great!" Think for a moment about
what it takes to do that. Google recognized it was a graduation
photo and then went a step beyond just guessing what it was, it
guessed at appropriate responses.
Dystopian future headline from December 25th, 2040: Millions of zombie "Happy Holiday" texts, Google to use death certificate database to fight zombies.
It's completely nonsensical.
Suddenly Gavin Belson curing cancer with compression seems like a better sell.
Goodbye Google Talk, Hangouts, Google Voice, and Messenger. This time, they're getting it right!
I'm pretty tempted to give up on Google and just use Whatsapp. At least I can trust that there's a business behind it in brand and concept. With Google, I haven't the slightest idea how much genuine effort they'll put into Allo. It took them years to fix integration issues with SMS/MMS in Hangouts, and there are still bugs and issues that have been simply ignored.
Anyways, my point is: Someone has a good idea, they implement it, it reaches the point where it's not easily integrated into another product. Instead of strong corporate leadership directing that the new thing be integrated into the old thing (or vice versa), they allow both to exist. Eventually one or more products have to be boxed up. I guess the main problem will be with discovering when this will happen and which product.
It should also be noted that, like WhatsApp with Facebook, Allo doesn't strictly require you to have an account beyond your phone number. This may be useful in helping it to grow as sign-up will be trivial. And users may eventually attach the app to their Google account (if they have one).
G+ introduced "Circles". I really liked that concept, it was a smooth way to organize the people I wanted to communicate with. Post a message, only my gaming buddies could see it. Post another, friends and family (and most gaming buddies fell under friends) could see it. And it was under my control and invisible to other users.
Talk: Adds nothing, it's just another messenger.
Hangouts: ... video and audio chat. Screen sharing.
Spaces: Seems like a more socially oriented Wave?
Wave: Neat, got stuck in performance hell and was hard to sell. The invite system didn't help. Collaborative documents. Integrated chat bots with the document much like this @google thing in Allo seems to be.
Allo: Talk - gmail account + (end-to-end encryption OR @google chatbot). It's WhatsApp meets part of Wave meets Google Talk.
Take G+, integrate Spaces into that. Make Hangouts part of that. Make Allo a part of Hangouts. Move Hangouts to end-to-end encryption model (broken with @google chatbot present, but not if you leave it out).
[0] I'm excluding GMail because it, at least, has a fairly well established place on its own and is, fundamentally, an email platform. The accounts are tied to the other services, but GMail is easily its own standalone product with a very large user base.
Now it is all about ads and reducing number of taps required to order a pizza. The keynote is just boring.
Because I always wanted a chat app that I could talk to AI with, not my actual real life friends, as they're too busy not giving a fuck at another $chatapp from Google and are still mad at me at the last two I was trying to make them use.
You're confusing them with Apple ;)
Allo -- video chat, e2e encryption and expiring messages. That looks good but unless someone else audits, I'll be suspicious.
Android N -- Vulkan for games, that looks promising. New jit compiler, 75% faster app install speed, 50% reduction in size. File-based encryption. Seamless updates -- phone downloads system image in background. Then on next boot it switches to new image. Also split screen to see multiple windows at the same time. Those are some nice new features.
NO.
Edit: Apparently this is preview of the caller, not preview of the called. I'm OK with that.
Wait, you mean they made apps install 75% faster but otherwise run 50% slower? That doesn't make much sense...
That better be configurable or I'll nickname Google 'Microsoft'
Android Studio 2.2 . Improvements to the compilers, many X improvements to instant run, automatic test generation, C++ debugging and constrained layout editors.
firebase - very cool.
This is huge...
By the way, this is clearly a first step for the merging of ChromeOS and Android. It is also possible that these "apps" will have limited access to Android APIs. In fact, I'd like to see exactly that in my Chrome browser on my desktop just to give it a try.
The primary entry point into Android Instant Apps are normal URLs which get shared over Email, SMS, or Instant Messaging, but for those URLs to ever get shared, they must already exist and work on the current web. So you still have to put in the effort of building a full Web experience.
...and Android can automatically enhance progressive web apps to provide experiences that are capable of being indistinguishable from native. Plus, it will work just fine everywhere else. Because it's the Web.
And you pretty much have to get close to that point anyway, since Instant Apps are useless without preexisting, functioning links for the app to hijack... why would you then duplicate the effort to have a version written in Java? Access to payment APIs is compelling for the B&H demo, but for Buzzfeed?
...and wouldn't you already be doing your damnedest to provide a similar experience for iOS or desktop users, on the Web itself?
Google, rather than taking a firm stand on which is "right", is providing tools so that developers can take either approach. Google, in this area, is more opinionated on the kind of UX that should be achieved than the route.
Now, you make some good arguments for why Progressive Web Apps might be the better route.
There's already dozens of pages that detects you're on a phone and send you directly to the play store and that you need to bypass using the "request desktop page" just to get access. Or event worst, sites that say let's make the mobile version less accessible while telling people it's better to install the app (Linkedin I'm looking at you)
This seems like a new step to give more power to publishers than to empower users.
Even during the presentation they said "We want you [developers] to be in control of the experience"
If I don't have app X installed it can mean I don't know the app. But also it can mean I find it a resource hogging, data gathering piece of turd and that's why I'm using a website.
It seems that choice has gone now.
Has no one but me had friends try to trick my phone into going into voice command by yelling "OK Google" at it when i unlock it?
What happened to Google? I remember back in the days when Apple said that they will reviewed all the apps before they appear on the App Stores. Now it looks reviewing apps before release is not cool anymore.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/app-submissions-on-google-p...
It's been like that for a few hours now.
A messaging app is only useful if enough of your friends use it.
This is a big one for me. Unless I can have my A/V calls and SMS messages in the same app as other chat, I'm not going to use it.
I watched the Goggle I/O event for 10 minutes. First, they talked about how they copied Siri.
And now they are talking about how they copied Amazon Echo.
Unlimited resources. Wasted...
The integration with chromecast is really neat.
I'll be getting one.
I am looking forward to when they release the version where they are generated on the spot with their new GPU improvements.
But for so much resources and combined talent, I would expect more than new sets of emojis. They way they were dishing it out was as if they brought peace on earth. Honestly, I would have felt embarrassed to mention it even in passing. (And what was with all those jeans and dress code in general?)
Also, if you are copying Apple and Amazon, which are known for their attention to detail, how about improving things a bit? At the end of the voice demo, the app purchases the tickets (without showing prices, locations, times, etc. (and how do I set up those in the first place?)). Now, the kicker: the phone displays a QR code and asks the owner to show it at the ticket counter at the movies. Himmm.... Really? How about skipping that too and just buzzing/vibrating/texting the user with that info when actually at the movie theater? After all, they spent a whole lot of time talking about context awareness, location awareness, NLP processing, etc. Didn't Siri do this much years ago?
Anyway, too many other things like that. I don't have time to list them all. I am just saying that a lot of people expected something more, and more cohesive.
Maybe there's room for a disposable message feature called 'I will say this only once...'