Google I/O 2018: all of the news from the keynote

Android Pie could be one of the most consequential Android updates in years. Not only is Google changing the way Android is navigated, but it’s also changing the way we interact with our phones — and how our phones interact with us. The update’s overarching goals are to make our phones less distracting and less stressful and to give people control over how much of their attention they suck up. It’s all about taking on notification and app overload.

Pie is now available for the Pixel, Pixel 2, and Essential Phone, and it’s supposed to come to other phones that had beta access within the next few months. Unfortunately, not all of Pie’s biggest features are available from the start — most notably, Google’s “digital wellbeing” features are only available in beta on Pixel phones. But other highlights, like gesture controls and screenshot editing, are available to everyone able to install Pie.

Google says it will require Android phone manufacturers to roll out security patches on a “regular” basis — though it isn’t clear who that requirement will apply to or how rigorous the mandate will be. On Wednesday, during a talk at Google’s annual developer conference that was caught by 9to5Google via XDA Developers, the company announced that many more users would receive regular security patches thanks to new agreements it’s making with partners.

“When you have billions of users, it’s a large target. And so it deserves the strongest possible defense,” says David Kleidermacher, Google’s head of Android security. “We’ve also worked on building security patching into our OEM agreements. Now this will really lead to a massive increase in the number of devices and users receiving regular security patches.”

Google came out with a new version of Google Lens in beta, the company announced at its annual developer conference on Tuesday. If you have one of the ten additional Android devices that are getting Google Lens inside their native camera apps, you’ll be able to access the feature simply by going into your camera and seeing the icon on the bottom right.

Tapping on the icon activates the Google Lens feature and you’ll be able to point your smartphone camera at objects and different sights to identify more information about them. Google Lens is also getting a real-time finder that will analyze what your camera sees even before you tap on the display. The tool will process the pixels through machine learning to provide more details and also provide relevant search tags.

The thing that’s given me greatest amusement at this year’s Google I/O has been the number of iPhone users raising an eyebrow at Google’s new focus on digital well-being and openly declaring that Android has leapfrogged iOS. As an avid Android acolyte, my reflexive response has been to say that Android has already been ahead of iOS in a number of important respects like its first-party apps, cloud services, and digital assistant. But then that got me thinking: which Android? Is it the Android on your 2016 Samsung Galaxy A7, or the Android on the latest Huawei P20 Pro, or the Android on Google’s own Pixel devices? These are all different flavors of supposedly the same thing, but I’m not so sure.

I’m starting to believe we need a more nuanced, differentiated language to discuss developments within the Android ecosystem. The language of the past — the one where “Windows” broadly meant the same thing no matter the manufacturer of the PC, and “iOS” still means more or less the same experience across a majority of iPhones — is too narrow to cover the multiplicity of devices, businesses, and experiences “Android” represents.

Following widespread outcry over the ethical dilemmas raised by Google’s new Duplex system, which lets artificial intelligence mimic a human voice to make appointments, Google has clarified in a statement that the experimental system will have “disclosure built-in.” That seems to mean that whatever eventual shape Duplex takes as a consumer product will involve some type of verbal announcement to the person on the other end that he or she is in fact talking to an AI.

“We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex — as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important,” a Google spokesperson told The Verge in a statement this evening. “We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”

In the keynote talk at this week’s Google I/O developer conference, executives announced new system-level features in Android to help people understand and manage their smartphone usage. “Great technology should improve life, not distract from it,” declared a banner headline on a new site from the company, wellbeing.google. The site continues: “We’re creating tools and features that help people better understand their tech usage, focus on what matters most, disconnect when needed, and create healthy habits for the whole family.”

Not long ago, it would have sounded strange to hear a big tech company talk plainly about the need to disconnect. Connecting the world is gospel for companies like Google, which invests many millions of dollars in ensuring as many people have internet access as possible. Since at least the acquisition of YouTube, the question has been how to get people to spend more time with Google, not less.

Google shocked the crowd at its I/O developer conference on Tuesday when it kicked off a fascinating discussion about AI ethics with Duplex, a human-like voice system for its Assistant product that makes phone calls on behalf of users. But while Duplex remains a more experimental and far-off effort — one we’ll likely be debating in the weeks and months to come — Google’s more measured approach to artificial intelligence as it pertains to legacy product development didn’t garner as many headlines. However, it’s those subtle AI-powered changes to existing and pervasive products that will have a far more visible impact on how we use software to interact with the world in the near future.

Take, for instance, the ways Google is using AI to improve both its Maps and News products, platforms that have been around for 13 and 15 years, respectively. Google executives onstage at I/O on Tuesday introduced a suite of changes that will make each more useful, personalized, and social, all thanks to self-learning algorithms that are now better at digesting and surfacing information than humans are.

Material Design launched in 2014, and it was mostly thought of as a new design language for Android — though it later came to the web and iOS. It had a bold idea: there should be a physicality to software design not unlike the physicality of paper. It should follow some rules that are almost physical, with layers of magic paper and strictures for how different software elements like buttons and drawers should behave.

“We went out with the original Material Design with what was a very fresh and very opinionated style. We wanted to get attention,” says Matias Duarte, the head of the Material Design group at Google. “And it was so strong and so opinionated and so successful, a lot of both the designer and developer community took it as a ‘gospel,’ perhaps is the right word.”

As someone who recently got a haircut, Google’s presentation yesterday at I/O really resonated with me. Finally, a service that can make phone calls on my behalf and negotiate appointment times with hair salons.

Google’s Duplex technology even uses the word “um” and sometimes misunderstands what people on the phone are talking about. Just like me!

The more technology advances, the clearer it becomes that our smartphones are no longer about conversing but more about transfers of information. This was evident at Google’s I/O keynote, where the company unveiled that its AI can now make phone calls on your behalf, booking salon appointments or restaurant reservations. The demo was stunning, both because of how human this next-level chatbot sounded and how dystopian the world would be with our robot imposters flooding the phone lines. But as I walked out of the conference yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about the person on the other end of the line. When did human service workers become Google’s to experiment on?

My first job was in the summer of 2004. I waitressed, took phone orders, and packed takeout food at my parents’ restaurant. That job has taught me to have empathy for those working in the service industry. There will always be a subset of people who are inexplicably rude, whether it’s by verbally harassing waiters or refusing to tip because they didn’t like the food. Modern technology has further enabled our entitlement, with the promise of apps and services that can customize, personalize, and cater to our every need, no matter how small. This has led us to disregard the humans fulfilling our demands.

Google announced a bunch of updates for its Assistant yesterday at I/O, including new ways to interact with Assistant and new voices. The announcements will likely improve the experience of using Assistant, but how do the features stack up against Amazon’s Alexa? We break down each of Google’s Assistant-related announcements from yesterday and how they compare to what Alexa can already do.

Google says that it’ll support more than 30 languages and will be in 80 countries by the end of the year. It also says Assistant is now compatible with more than 5,000 home devices, which is up from only 1,500 in January, and is installed on more than 500 million devices. It’s also in cars from over 40 auto brands.

Every company in Silicon Valley will tell you, with operatic grandeur, that it aims to change the world and make it a better place. But set aside the pretenders trying to sell you $400 juicers, Google happens to be a company that can actually alter the way we, as a global society, interact with and understand one another. Google has control over the world’s dominant search engine, web browser, video and email platforms, mapping service, and mobile operating system. The decisions made by this company have far-reaching effects, and Google I/O 2018 presented a vision of the future that makes Google even more personal, influential, and essential in our daily lives.

One of Google’s promotional videos during the event concluded with the tagline “just make Google do it.” As with the very name of the Google Assistant it was advertising, this promo positions Google’s services as your servants, the Alfred to your Batman, as it were. But I feel like this deliberately benign portrayal masks a huge number of proactive decisions that Google makes every day on our behalf, and it’s useful to revisit those in light of the latest announcements from the company.

It turns out that the Google-branded Android TV dongle that showed up at the FCC awhile back isn’t a consumer product. Instead, Google is offering it to developers as a reference product for testing their TV applications on. You can apply to receive one of the ADT-2 units from Google directly. The dongle supports 4K resolution at 60fps and is also capable of HDR playback. The specs are fairly middle of the road; an Nvidia Shield this is not.

Android Police notes that it uses the same chipset as Amazon’s Fire TV 4K dongle and has 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. It seems that the Android TV team built this gadget expressly for development purposes since the busted-old Nexus Player is no longer supported. But they made enough to give away the dongle as an I/O freebie and mail some out to developers. A voice remote is included, so using Google Assistant to pull up content is about as simple as it gets.

In a move that brings its digital wallet closer in line with Apple’s, Google is adding mobile tickets for travel and entertainment events to Google Pay. The iPhone has offered the ability to store your mobile tickets — called “passes” in Apple’s case — inside the Wallet app for quick access since 2012. Google Pay already lets you do that with credit cards and loyalty cards, but now Android users will find digital boarding passes and scannable tickets inside the app as well. Southwest Airlines actually added the feature to its app a day before Google’s event, which Android Police picked up on.

Google collaborated with Urban Airship “to create streamlined and engaging ticketing and boarding pass experiences.” A number of travel and entertainment brands like Alaska Airlines and Regal Cinemas already utilize Urban Airship’s platform, which allows for “real-time updates (like departure time changes), and personalized one-to-one messaging within the card and through lockscreen notifications.”

Google Chrome is getting a big upgrade with the ability to run Linux apps, with a preview set to be released on the Google Pixelbook today before rolling out later to other models, according to a report from VentureBeat.

It’s a major addition to Google’s web-based operating system, which up until now has offered web-based Chrome applications and, more recently, the ability to run Android apps. But the option to run full-fledged Linux software marks the first time that real desktop applications have come to Chrome OS.

We just took a quick look at a 3D-printed prototype of the recently announced JBL Link Bar, a soundbar that also happens to be a set-top box running Android TV. It’s not coming out until later this summer, and a lot of stuff isn’t quite working yet. But the core ideas are pretty smart. Basically, it puts a relatively smart set-top box into your soundbar, making it a sort of a hybrid between a smart TV, an HDMI switcher, and a smart speaker. It’s a lot of things crammed together in honestly clever ways.

So if you’re just looking for an Android TV set-top box, this thing does that. It has Google Assistant, YouTube, and all the standard set-top box apps you’d like. As with other Android TVs, you can ask Assistant to do stuff like “Play Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu,” and it’ll jump right into that show.

Google just wrapped up a huge preview of the new features coming to Android P. It’s an ambitious update that includes significant changes to the operating system almost everywhere you look. The official release of Android P won’t happen until late summer, but you don’t have to wait that long to try out P’s new gestures, see the new look, and go over the depressing data showing how much time you’re spending on your phone. Beginning today, you can install the first public beta on a few supported smartphones.

Typically, these betas have been limited to Google’s own smartphones, but with Android P, you can load the update onto a few devices from other companies as well. This is the widest mix of products that have had day-one access to a beta of a new version of Android, and we’ve got Project Treble to thank for that. Here’s the list of what’s supported:

It’s been two years since Google introduced Instant Apps, a Google Play feature that lets users try an app without downloading it. While the format has been mostly popular with game developers, today, Google announced at its annual I/O developer conference that Instant Apps will soon support ARCore, allowing users to interact with augmented reality apps without having to download them.

The experience will also be more closely integrated with search rather than within Google Play or in-app advertisements. For example, soon, users will be able to search for shoppable items and see a link to an Instant App that lets them place the products in front of them in augmented reality — much like the Ikea Place app that lets you virtually trial furniture pieces in your home.

Google made multiple major announcements related to the future of its Assistant today, including new voices, a feature to teach kids good manners, the ability to continue conversations, and Assistant being able to make phone calls on a user’s behalf.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says he wants Assistant to be “natural and comfortable to talk to.” As such, users can now keep a conversation going with Assistant without repeatedly saying, “Hey Google,” to start every query. If you want to ask a question, you can keep asking more until you’ve reached a natural stopping point in the conversation. The feature, called continued conversations, should be available in the “coming weeks.” Amazon’s Alexa assistant already does this with its follow-up mode.

Google has come out with a new version of Google Lens in beta, the company announced at its annual developer conference today. The new version will be built inside the camera app, instead of Google Photos, and will roll out over the next few weeks.

As part of the latest update, Google Lens is going to be built into 10 different Android devices’ native cameras, including Google Pixel 2 and LG 7 ThinQ devices, so you don’t have to open a separate app. There will also be a real-time finder that will analyze what your camera sees even before you press click. If you point your camera at a poster of a musician, Lens can also start playing a music video.

Google is giving Google News a refresh that brings all its news products into one experience, the company announced at its annual developer conference.

The new Google News experience begins with a “For You” section that has a briefing of five top stories Google has pulled for you. This is a mix of global headlines, local news, and new developments on stories you’ve been following. You can then switch over to Headlines to see top stories from around the world. Additional sections here let you dive into different topics like sports, business, or technology.

With Android P, Google is taking an ambitious approach to its user interface design with two new concepts it’s introducing to developers today: “Actions” and “Slices.” Described in detail onstage at the company’s I/O developer conference keynote this morning, Actions and Slices are ways for third-party app features and even visual design to permeate parts of the Android OS, most notably in search and within Google Assistant.

Actions are like shortcuts or recipes, similar to the action terminology Google created for Assistant (or an Alexa Skill created by Amazon), that let a user quickly access a deeper function of an app with the touch of a button or a voice command. Some examples here could be calling a Lyft ride home or reordering your favorite meal from a take-out restaurant. Google says Actions can be created for any third-party app, and they’ll live in Android P’s search bar, in the Play Store, within Assistant, and in a customizable fashion on your home screen.

The Android team worked with Alphabet’s DeepMind to add AI to battery management, in a new feature called “Adaptive Battery.” The AI will monitor your phone’s battery consumption and will shut down apps running in the background that you haven’t touched for a while. It will also adjust your phone’s brightness based on your habits.

It only spends battery on the apps that you generally use and Android says it has seen an average of a 30 percent reduction in CPU usage when waking up apps. The data is supposed to stay private on your phone, since it’s AI running solely on your device, says Dave Burke, VP of engineering on the Android team.

Google says six new voices are coming to the Google Assistant, including that of singer John Legend. The company made the announcement at its I/O developer conference today. These voices were created through WaveNet, which the company says helped it not only record John Legend’s voice, but then incorporate it into the assistant voice repertoire to work for any query. Legend’s voice, among others, will come to the Assistant later this year. The new voices will be included in phones and home speakers, of course.

At its annual developer conference, Google announced a new feature coming to Gmail called Smart Compose.

An extension of Gmail’s Smart Reply feature, Smart Compose will suggest complete sentences within the body of an email as you are writing. It will operate in the background, and if you see a phrase pop up that you like, just hit tab to select it, and the text will auto-populate. Not only will this help save time when writing emails, Google says it will help reduce the chance of you sending off something with a grammar or spelling error (if that’s a problem for you).