Ask HN: Does anyone care anymore what Google demos in IO? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does anyone care anymore what Google demos in IO?

88 pointsposharma98 comments

They'll release something only to kill it a few months later. Is anyone taking Google IO seriously?

No.

Google’s hardware is lackluster, their services come and go and are bloated with telemetry, their search is worse than ever, there’s no live customer support person to talk with in the event of a problem, and there’s no unified vision.

Engineering is good, leadership is abysmal.

Every year I scan through their Google I/O website to see if anything catches my eyes, not many things they're presenting catch my eyes. I did look at Flutter 3, but probably won't try it out.

And the Google hardware ecosystem just does not appeal to me.

Their hardware used to be good though.

Nexus 7, Nexus 5 were good unlocked, inexpensive devices. After that i really hoped their project Ara (block phone) to take off but they abandoned it.

Only the Chromecast is interesting, but that is really becoming less and less every day due to their aggressive advertising.

I am still pissed off since buying a Chromecast just to realize there was no way to watch videos on a harddrive on the home network.

You might want to check Videostream for Chromecast ? There's both a mobile app that links to your PC and also a desktop app. Last time I checked, VLC also allowed casting of videos on your PC(although iirc was more iffy with subtitles, etc) though not sure if there's mobile support, and I believe there are also other paid apps that can be used to cast videos. If you're referring to seeing videos directly from a hard drive without a PC, a TV with usb support should take care of that (long time ago, I had even a Bluray player that had usb and was used in similar fashion to cast videos from a usb flash drive)

At the time, like 4 years ago, I could make nothing work except poor screencasts. That functionality should be native.

It is easier to just plug a laptop into the TV than using a Chromecast.

Maybe I should give it another try.

BubbleUPnP for DLNA/Chromecast

On my PC I can open chrome and stream to the Chromecast on my network. I drag videos from the desktop onto chrome and it plays fine.

Only reason I have chrome installed lol.

Being kind of a cheapskate, I've tried chromecast and the Amazon one and then bought an AppleTV device. I haven't had issues like I did with other dongle-like devices with having to restart them when there was a hiccup or crash of some kind - which is especially annoying when watching live sports.

I now have two AppleTV devices

(I use the word 'device' because they also have a streaming product called AppleTV+, which btw has some really good shows, and I think you can get the streaming service w/o the device)

> there’s no live customer support person to talk with in the event of a problem

There is, if you own a Pixel or pay for it (Google One, combines extra Google Drive/GMail storage and customer support). It's not great that you have to pay for it, but at Google's scale it doesn't really make sense, purely financially, the staffing required to support every free user.

Are there many companies that operate under a freemium/freeware business model that provide free support to anyone?

> but at Google's scale it doesn't really make sense, purely financially, the staffing required to support every free user.

This seems to get trotted out often whenever Google providing support gets mentioned. But I don't think anyone is asking Google to suddenly offer support for every customer question under the sun. Maybe they just need to provide a little support for some of the big problems: like algorithms banning people from all of the Google services that they have used for many years, for non-discernable reasons with zero comebacks. They spend plenty of money getting people on board their services (and extracting as much data as they can from them) but none on retaining customer loyalty after an algorithm gets it wrong.

> none on retaining customer loyalty after an algorithm gets it wrong

Textbook monopoly.

If they offer support for some cases, especially complicated cases like those, they'll get bombarded with all sorts of questions anyways (if you've never heard an IT person get asked about coffee machines "because they're tech" or to help out with somebody's personal phone/PC/whatever, i suggest you visit Reddit, more specifically r/sysadmin and r/talesfromtechsupport. It makes for fun, albeit sad reading.

And discarding that, it's a tough balancing act between helping users recover accounts without helping malicious actors takeover accounts and/or helping malicious actors keep malicious accounts. It'd take effort to train personnel and establish policies to do all that properly.

And regarding customer loyalty, why do you think Google care about that? It really doesn't seem like they do, and financially, their revenue per customer is negligible for that to make a difference.

Why don't they just do something like that Whitehouse website where people can vote on things. If enough votes go to a particular issue, address it.

This would be a nice middle ground between no support and having to support everything.

A lot of people would send them a lot of money to fix their "freeware" problem. Especially if the system decided to destroy their existence. They just don't care. At their scale, you as an individual are to insignificant.

Google doesn't let you pay for support for a lot of their products even if you wanted to. The nail in the coffin for me is how YouTubers with millions of subscribers who generate thousands of dollars for Google can't even get good support themselves. The fact that these problems continue to happen year after year tells me that Google doesn't really care.

The choice to provide support seems to be on an app by app basis. I get support for YT Premium, Google Pay, My Pixel, and all of my Google Home products. But I can't get support for Google Chrome for example.

The support I do get is excellent. I don't think I've ever been in a chat queue for longer than 5 minutes. And often they can resolve my problem.

Anything involving a warranty or out of warranty repair those has been painful for me because of third party repairers.

> Are there many companies that operate under a freemium/freeware business model that provide free support to anyone?

Does it matter that it's freemium. Google make obscene profits. They have plenty of money to fund support if they wanted to.

It's not great even if you pay for it.

This was the Google One support email I recieved for trying to cancel a Youtube premium sub on an account that got wiped for spams/scams that prevented access to the subscription page... which is another basket case of drama since the account doesn't post any content or interact with Youtube other than view videos. Just deleted out of the blue with no prior warning.

>We'd really love to help you regarding this concern, and I also can imagine how important this is to you. It's just that we don't have the proper training, or the updated knowledge (regarding this topic) for us to help you effectively.

Yeah. BTW this was from Youtube support after One support forwarded them the ticket. NVM they wiped all my uploaded music migrated from Google Music and 20 years of playlists. Even Google Takeout for services seem to be gone. Appeal was also denied without any explanation, so have to wait another couple weeks to try again.

I kinda do care, but this year it seems they removed the headphone from their so-called "affordable" phone, the Pixel 6a. Call me old fashioned, but I very much do still use wired headphones, especially when doing yard work, or whatever physical exercise, or connecting to any of my analog audio gear. The phone is a convergence device, and so walking away from audio convergence is a big mistake IMHO.

As far as the watch goes, I'm curious, it could be compelling if it surpases the Samsung watch, and we just assume is beats anything by fitbit.

A new tablet might be nice, and correct me if wrong but it feels like Android abandoned the tablet market, right? So it's nice to see them getting back in the game.

Xperias still have a headphone jack, but just like anything made by Sony, you're going to pay quite a bit for it.

SD card port too, which Google always seems to neglect.

But Sony needs to figure out how to number things in a straightforward way.

Sony phones are named like their cameras.

First number is the model (1/5/10); smaller is more premium.

Roman numeral is the generation (i/ii/iii); bigger is newer.

It's about as straightforward as they come when it comes to phone naming. The competition names things <generation number> + Mini/Pro/Pro Max/SE or S/Z/A/M <generation number> e/Lite/+/Ultra/FE or <generation number> +a/a(5G)/Pro/XL.

Wasn't it Canon who does it that way?

IIRC there was a7 and a9 and a9 was better (ignoring the "r" numbers).

On the other hand Canon's 1D is the flagship, next 5D, then 6D, 7D, then things mess up at higher digits where larger number within same digit count is the newer, yet less number of digits is the more pro model.

Yeah, Sony cameras are higher number models are higher positioned models. Canon is lower number is higher positioned models. But they follow a very boring number/variant/generation naming scheme. At least until they announced the a1 which is positioned above the a9.

Then there's Nikon that just decided to pick numbers outta a hat.

I love Xperias design. But my experience with one was terrible. It came with a snapdragon processor that the phone couldn't properly cool down so if I had the camera app opened for more than 30 seconds, I'd get an alert saying that the app had to be automatically closed due to high temperature.

> we just assume is beats anything by fitbit.

BTW google owns Fitbit.

> Call me old fashioned, but I very much do still use wired headphones.

However, I see that kids these days (my daughter turned teenage this year) are more into wired headphones. We had all sorts of wireless headsets (gaming or otherwise), wireless earbuds, etc. But she ended up using the wired ones more -- don't want to worry about charging, easier to use, just works, etc. are some of her reasons.

I agree with your daughter.

No chance in hell I will use a wireless headset.

I was gifted a wireless headset some years back, but I have always used it with wire.

I do not want to charge another thing. There are already too many things that I have to charge.

Will not use earbuds because I tend to lose things inside my house. They are impractical on the road while walking or on public transport.

Not to mention wireless ones drain phone's battery faster.

I use a Linux OS as my daily driver, and it tends to cause problem wrt being in perfect sync.

I have quite an high-end Philips wired earphones and that mid-range wireless one that I always use wired.

> I do not want to charge another thing.

Preach. I sometimes think my only purpose in life is to continually ensure things are charged.

I don't think it has to be one or another, I'm completely happy with my Sony headphones, the Bluetooth never failed to pair, they connect about the same time it would take me to plug them.

If they run out of battery, I can plug them, yes recharging takes time but it can be done when they are not in use.

I had a Bluetooth headset and it was uncomfortable, so I understand that. Also, Bluetooth <5.0 has a few noticeable issues.

On the other hand I cannot complain about my earbuds. If I want to use my earbuds, I turn on Bluetooth, take out my earbuds and put them in my ears. (If I turn on Bluetooth after, I have to manually connect them, but I don't think that's a big deal).

VLC on Android is very helpful in setting up profiles for Bluetooth audio so you can set a permanent delay.

They've never fallen out of my ears. I just put them back in the case when I'm finished with them. I charge the case about once a week.

I don't have a dangling cable get caught on things and hurt my ears.

I don't have one ear stop working because the cable has got damaged.

I don't have to untie cable knots.

I will never buy wired earphones again.

Wireless headsets do have their function, but if you want quality sound your best bet is wired.

I do hope that we'll get the headphone jack back, because it really doesn't take up that much space in the phone (or even laptop) and it's extremely reliable!

Well, they (and most other smartphone makers) "converged" all interfaces into USB-C. I personally use wireless headphones, but is using a USB-C-to-headphone-plug adapter (which you usually get with the phone) really that much of a hassle?

Yes it is. Mine is never there when I need it, and it doesn't even work right sometimes.

USB-C ports actually have to support audio (ie be plugged into a DAC). My wife has a phone with a USB-C port that gives a helpful message that it wont work without an official adapter if you plug in a rando USB-C - 3.5mm adapter. So yeah, fuck USB-C, it's a hassle.

My new phone was a Nokia XR20, headphone jack included

I'll keep this one on my watch list, as LG is getting out of the business (of providing me phones with good audio quality).

Were the first few generations of wireless earbuds that bad?

I bought my first pair a year ago and haven't had a problem with them.

I don't have a dangling cable get caught on things and hurt my ears.

I don't have one ear stop working because the cable has got damaged.

I don't have to untie cable knots.

Google develop products for three reasons : a) To maintain (and hopefully increase) ad revenue, their cash cow. b) To attempt to diversify from this single source of income. Except this will never happen, nothing will ever come close to the income ads generate for them. They know this, but they have to look like they’re trying, both internally and externally. c) To create a false sense with the masses that they are a cutting edge technology company, to maintain the Google brand and thus keep people using Search. This includes things like Google Glass, silly natural language toys, self driving cars, etc. None of these things are even intended for mass production / consumption. Google IO is merely a showcase for these technology throw-aways, nothing more.

I’d suggest they care less about new products diversifying income and more about new products making them look diversified and less like a monopoly. That is the logic behind changing their name to “Alphabet”, distract from their utter dominance in search. Their only real fear and existential threat is from the govt doing an antitrust on them and forcing a breakup, hence it’s worth a few billion every year to keep that wolf from the door.

This is a great point, I agree. I’d add, if they are serious, Google need also to fear disruption from an as yet unknown source. This has killed many a dominant company, and by its nature difficult to predict and safeguard against.

I agree that disruption is the other major threat, which they also pour billions into via acquisitions and VC activities. My guess though is that the possibility of govt action is what really scares them, and most of the tech elite. You can tell when Google realised this by noting that they went from spending almost nothing on lobbying to spending quite a lot (coinciding roughly with their transition from “don’t be evil” to “c’mon, man, be real “)

It’s not that long ago that Microsoft was facing the very real possibility of antitrust, so it’s very much something leaders of tech companies have a duty (to shareholders) to defend against.

I see in a different way, my take from comments read in the past here about Google employees, is that they build new products to get promoted, when they get promoted they jump to another project and then soon you will see the product in the graveyard[0].

[0] https://killedbygoogle.com

What bothers me about Waymo is how they pretend to compete with Tesla, saying their self-driving tech is better etc... Ok but what even is your product?? I had to look that up, and supposedly there are self-driving taxis somewhere in the US that they're controlling that you can sign up to _beta test_. I don't even recall seeing any in the two cities of operation, SF and Phoenix. Only see Waymo training cars being driven by humans around Mountain View. Like 15% of any given Google employee parking lot is filled with Teslas.

And are those Teslas self-driving?

> b) To attempt to diversify from this single source of income. Except this will never happen, nothing will ever come close to the income ads generate for them. They know this, but they have to look like they’re trying, both internally and externally.

I’ve heard a lot of people repeat this, and I don’t think I understand where it’s coming from.

Advertising is just a revenue model, it’s not something a company necessarily needs to diversify. This seems to me like saying Walmart is in a precarious position because all their revenue comes from sales.

It’s the product offering that needs diversification. Walmart can’t only sell coconuts.

The ad revenue is coming from pretty diversified sources: search, video/tv, maps, email, calendar, web browser, mobile …

My point is that all their eggs are in one basket, in an industry that is particularly prone to disruption. Additionally, as others have since commented, they are also at risk of regulation. So if they want to protect themselves they need to diversify, find other revenue streams.

Google disappoints me. They've got a bunch of talented engineers who IMO are the most ethical you'd find in FAANG, but from the very top their leadership has no passion. The founders recently ditched. The CEO has maybe done a lot, but he's never _said_ anything consequential, and that matters just as much. The only clear direction I've seen has been the infamous "frustrate and seduce" tactic mentioned by a YouTube head.

I refuse to believe that this show of gadgetry is just to keep regulators away. I think they're really trying to find their next thing, but the lack of drive is making everything cost so much that they abandon each time. Sometimes it's working out, though. The Chromebook has so far been a success in schools. And a lot of the smaller features mentioned at I/O are real and impressive.

When you get that big, the legal department takes over and has to double check every spoken word and decision that is made.

All the shenanigans with their AI (or policies) closing people's accounts on YouTube or Gmail or whatever, that results in livelihoods ruined, kind of turned me off of anything Google.

For me it was the tracking and the advertising. But realising that it’s more likely to get permanently locked out of Gmail than someone hacks my domain also made me switch from Gmail.

10 ways we ruined your search results in 2022

You won't believe #3!

More ads! Now more indistinguishable than ever!

What ever happened to that natural language thing they demoed a few years ago that could call up a restaurant and get you reservations and stuff? That was so cool.

It was entirely vaporware. The demo was on rails/fabricated.

Huh? I used it last week to make a reservation.

Wow, TIL! Thanks for the correction. They definitely aren't shouting it from the rooftops!

So much misinformation on here lol… you can literally use it now.

Available in 49 states (not Louisiana) and a host of countries other than the U.S.

https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-google-duplex-86947...

Not Louisiana? That's a strange exception.

Yeah, that was probably the last year that I was interested in Google’s products. I couldn’t believe how awesome that demo was, it really felt like the future. But then the features that we actually got were huge letdowns. And I just kinda…stopped caring, and started asking questions about privacy concerns, and ultimately moved off of Google entirely.

I think that product was too expensive to offer to the masses. It needed huge honking neural nets that cost too much to run.

In the meantime there are open TTS engines with similar quality and language models that can hold better conversation. They don't have a monopoly on that chat-bot tech anymore.

The demi was impressive but I don't see how it could work in real life considering the limitations of the technology

Apparently it's been available since last year https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/1/22361729/google-duplex-ai-...

Yea I kept trying to get assistant on android to do it for me over the years but it never worked, ever. Giant let down.

They are in a weird spot of being a privacy invading company that creates products to protect your privacy.

Hahaha that’s true.

Yes. I think hn can be a bit of a bubble sometimes. AlloyDB looks cool, for example. Also interesting to see what's coming up in new Android releases given it's the OS with the most users in the world.

AlloyDB is nothing but their own forked version of Postgres with some improvements. Neither it's open source nor up-streamed to validate their claims.

Android/iOS releases for past 4 years, you can simply skip and you don't notice any changes in Visual/New Features/Performance aspect

> AlloyDB is nothing but their own forked version of Postgres with some improvements. Neither it's open source nor up-streamed to validate their claims.

They're claiming a 4x speed up over stock postgres for transactional workloads. Given that postgres is a very mature and performant DB already I think that's pretty friggin incredible! Im not sure which parts of it you'd expect them to open source, given that it's basically a carefully designed + built storage layer which I imagine is pretty closely tied to GCPs internals. If you wanted to validate their claims you could always start up an instance and run your own tests.

> Android/iOS releases for past 4 years, you can simply skip and you don't notice any changes in Visual/New Features/Performance aspect

Oh c'mon, that's not fair. There have been monumental leaps forward in security, performance, design and pretty much everything else on Android at least. The design has been radically updated in 12 too, which is nice to see (even if some bits broke my workflow).

There's a fine balancing act with this: Change too little, and people call the OS old and legacy software; change too much, and you've broken a lot of people's workflow(s) and expectations of the OS. They really can't win either way.

No, They can't seem to guarantee that the new tech I start learning today will still be around in a year... the rate at which they kill products and services is just frustrating and I'll skip, thanks.

In 2013 I was at I/O, when Larry Page stood on stage and allowed questions from the audience. It was enlightening and he gave a clear vision of the future. I have no idea what Sundar Pichai stands for. He still seems like someone working below a CEO improving a range of products. It's apt, because he is a bit like Tim Cook, both focused on a diversified organisation and an engine to pop out improvements. I miss the big visions and the clear picture. We only get that from Elon Musk and I wish we had a few visionaries as counterweight against him.

I do care, because I find it interesting, while I am sceptical if they are really capable of doing everything that they say, I still find it very interesting, which is why I always watch the entire full version of the event.

I know that in the past five years or so it has become very hip and cool to hate on Google and other bigger-then-some-countries companies, but I still try to be positive and thus focus on the positive.

While the negative does have its function, it is best to avoid it unless it's requested, same goes for hobbies, if someone asks you what you think about their hobby or the thing that they're working on, just be positive and give negative side only if they asked for it, because in many cases just giving people the negative or even just asking what's the point can have a really negative effect on them and their hobby, even if that wasn't what you intended to do.

It is true that human experience comes from inside, but we're all vulnerable some times.

Only if they demo real customer service

I do not care about the Google IO. But my reasons are far from everyone else's.

I work in ML. And if there's any thing that is cool and/or I should care about, it always trickles down to me within some weeks.

They actually do decent work in ML but don't share their models and can't use those models in products because of their large size. So it's little to see.

How else will you find out what this years new messaging app will be?

I was delighted to see they added more languages to Google Translate. And auto-translate in chat apps is really cool.

I mean, I care about what they demo more than whatever FB demos in that conference they have every year.

Not me - low bidder hardware that’s not exactly worldshaking? (Oooh Google Pixel Watch!) Services of low interest and even lower lifespan? Handwaving about their respect for their users/infofodder? Maybe if I was in SEO or ads, I’d care because that’d be my business…

Nope. Someone else already announced what they’re doing at least a year before and also, it’s Google, who don’t have a good reputation among colleagues and friends. We all have our own Google horror stories that invoke disinterest in their products and services.

It was great in the early days of AppEngine but now, even keeping up with the changelog of GCP has turned into a full-time job.

I think it’s good to be aware of their software advances, but most of the hardware reveals really demonstrated the amount of time needed to copy competitors’ designs (with a few exceptions).

LMAO I was greenlit to attend in.. 2013? 2014? as I worked in public education and got a free chromebook pixel. Neat hardware kinda. Played with google glasses but everything was boring.

I was there too and those were actually the good days. You felt like Google was building the internet

Google being a major pusher of RCS is hurting its adoption IMO.

How does RCS help their bottom line, which is advertising? There’s no reason to believe they won’t abandon it at some point.

Even more than the fact it's warmed-over telco garbage?

Well yeah, that too.

I would be interested to see if they do something with the metaverse.

I mean google glass was ahead of its time.

It depends on what they demo. I'm very much interested in their Quantum AI stuff.

How else would you find out what products they'll discontinue in 6-36 months?

No. Google is intrinsically untrustworthy.

Which companies do you care about?

Not really.

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