Google I/O 2023: all the news from Google’s big developer event – The Verge

Where to preorder the Google Pixel Fold

2023-06-20T11:59:10-04:00

Suddenly, June can’t come soon enough. | Image: Google

During Google's I/O keynote in May, Google introduced both its new flagship foldable and midrange slab phone offerings: the Pixel Fold and the Pixel 7A. These were some of the showcase device announcements at the tech giant's big spring event, which was accompanied by other Android and AI-related news.

The Pixel Fold is a new ultra-flagship addition to the Pixel lineup, one that represents Google's first attempt at a foldable phone and takes a page from Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 4 in the "it's a regular-ish phone that also unfolds into a small tablet" department. It runs a whopping $1,799 and is due out in July. Here's what you need to know a …

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Google’s AI tools embrace the dream of Clippy

2023-05-14T09:00:00-04:00

Microsoft’s Clippy sits atop its paper throne. | Image: Microsoft

The words "it looks like you're writing a letter, would you like some help with that?" didn't appear at any point during Google's recent demo of its AI office suite tools. But as I watched Aparna Pappu, Google's Workspace leader, outline the feature onstage at I/O, I was reminded of a certain animated paperclip that another tech giant once hoped would help usher in a new era of office work.

Even Microsoft would acknowledge that Clippy's legacy is not wholly positive, but the virtual assistant is forever associated with a particular period of work - one packed to the brim with laborious emails, clip art, and beige computers with clunking har …

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Google’s AI pitch is a recipe for email hell

2023-05-13T13:00:00-04:00

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Of all the emotions I expected out of this week's Google I/O keynote, "dread" was not on my short list. Google has spent a couple of decades creating products that make my life easier. This week, it demonstrated the exact opposite: a way to make communicating with other people worse.

Google I/O, this year, was focused on artificial intelligence, and one of its centerpieces was prompt-based text generation, particularly in Google's office suite. At several points throughout the keynote, it demoed a system called "Help me write" - which rewrites simple prompts in Gmail and other apps as more polished paragraphs of text. But more polished does …

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Android 14 played a surprisingly small role in Google’s I/O keynote

2023-05-13T11:00:00-04:00

This year’s I/O keynote featured a lot of AI and very little about the next version of Google’s mobile OS. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

There was a chilly marine layer hanging in the air above the Shoreline Amphitheater, but the danceable beats thumped on in spite of it. Dan Deacon was playing a set that had something to do with AI, followed by a person in a duck costume dancing on stage. Not the kind of spectacle you're typically expecting before you've even had your second cup of coffee, but that's Google I/O, baby.

I/O is, of course, the company's yearly developer conference, and it officially kicked off on Wednesday morning when CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage, headlining a two-hour presentation that was almost entirely centered on AI. We got a preview of what's comin …

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Can Google’s Pixel Fold really hang?

2023-05-13T09:00:00-04:00

For US buyers, the Pixel Fold is the first credible alternative to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold series. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

I don't give a damn about the bezels. Just let me get that part of Google's new $1,799 Pixel Fold out of the way. They're fine. And I'm absolutely on board with the squat form factor: having this phone / tablet hybrid feel like a notepad in hand when it's closed seems like a far better solution than Samsung's tall boy.

The Galaxy Fold 4 is too narrow for us large-handed humans, and when opened up, its square-ish inner display leaves sizable black bars when watching videos. In his Pixel Fold hands-on, my colleague Dan Seifert found Google's wider aspect ratio to feel more natural for multitasking.

There's a lot that's promising about the Pi …

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The Ask Jeeves-ification of online search

2023-05-12T14:34:13-04:00

I’m about to crumble into dust just typing this.

There are some who will tell you that Ask Jeeves was right all along. I'm less sure that's true. In fact, I am starting to think that if you are a technical person who is considering a startup, Google's fascination with adding a slow and unreliable AI chat to its results is an opening for you to put a brick on the gas pedal and absolutely run Google over.

Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, and the idea was that you'd type a natural-language query into the box, and the valet would come back with an answer. (Jeeves is named for P.G. Wodehouse's famous character, a near-omniscient man with a "feudal spirit." Disclosure: my cat is also named for this …

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16 ways that Android 14 will subtly improve your phone

2023-05-12T13:00:16-04:00

It wouldn't be Google I/O if the company didn't have a new version of its smartphone and tablet operating system waiting in the wings - and while Android 14 got totally upstaged by AI and the company's first folding phone, we've since learned more from the company's developer sessions.

Don't get too excited: these changes are subtle! But here are a few ways Google's "Upside Down Cake" might make your life slightly sweeter when it arrives this fall.

Ditch passwords

Passkeys are already here - but not evenly distributed. In Android 14, third-party apps will be able to use your Android phone and your fingerprint alone to sign you up and let yo …

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Google’s new Pixel Tablet might be the end of the smart display

2023-05-12T13:00:00-04:00

The Pixel Tablet, with its charging speaker dock and more powerful processor, is a compelling replacement for underpowered smart displays. | Image: Dan Seifert / The Verge

With the arrival of the Pixel Tablet with a charging speaker dock at Google I/O this week, Google did what it does best: killed a product. Only this time, it didn't just kill its product; it foreshadowed the death of the entire smart display category. Ah well. They had a good run, but folks, it's the end of the line. The precise time of death was when Google exec Rose Yao described the new Pixel Tablet on its dock like this: "It feels like a smart display, but it has one huge advantage … Android apps."

When one of really only two companies that make smart displays proudly proclaims that its shiny new smart home control device is not a smar …

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Google wants you to forget the 10 blue links

2023-05-12T11:00:00-04:00

The single most visited page on the internet is undergoing its most radical change in 25 years.

On Wednesday, Google introduced a major overhaul of its search results page that infuses the screen with AI. Called the Search Generative Experience (SGE), the new interface makes it so that when you type a query into the search box, the so-called "10 blue links" that we're all familiar with appear for only a brief moment before being pushed off the page by a colorful new shade with AI-generated information. The shade pushes the rest of Google's links far down the page you're looking at - and when I say far, I mean almost entirely off the screen …

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How Google is making up for lost time

2023-05-12T09:30:00-04:00

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on stage at I/O 2023. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

The arrival of ChatGPT last year sent a rare shiver through Google's spine. For years the company had positioned itself as a leader in the development in artificial intelligence. Suddenly, though, a product from the upstart OpenAI rocketed to tens of millions of monthly users - and observers began asking whether Google had squandered its lead.

Within weeks, leaders at the company declared a "code red" - a signal that the time to begin shipping AI features was now. (It was widely reported that CEO Sundar Pichai declared the code red, but he later told me that it wasn't the case.)

A handful of products have shipped since - most notably Bard, …

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