Google launches its own festival to bring together music and technology

It's pretty standard schmaltzy PR BS if you ask me

They're donating all of the ticket sales for the shows to charity.

While it is a PR branding stunt, at least in that regard it is "playing for generosity". Moreso than most branded shows

I remember about 10 years ago when Google's UX design was absolutely state of the art. It was a no bullshit, maybe even ugly, aesthetic. It was literally unbelievably fast and supremely useful.

Fast forward to now and it's FILLED with garbage like this across the board. Mystery meat navigation abounds, contrast is poor, inconsistency is everywhere likely due to the complexity of their menu structures. And then there is what the parent postal mentions: colored text in body copy that isn't links. Holy hell.

These are all UX mistakes that are covered in software design 101. I guess the money hose of Google search let's you get away with it all. They just keep redesigning. And their products keep becoming more impenetrable.

In most contexts, an entertainment event being "presented by X" just means that X funded the event in exchange for having their name associated with it. E.g., "Thursday Night Football, Presented by Bud Light" -- Bud Light has nothing to do with the content or transmission of the event, it just paid the most money for advertising.

However: you're totally right that they may do some cool tie-in with the phone itself in this case.

"Stay tuned for photos and videos from each show, captured by Pixel, a phone by Google."