Category Archives: Google

Serial 1, the electric bike company spun out of Harley-Davidson, launched its second-generation lineup of premium e-bikes but the biggest changes will be coming to the companys app.

The updated bikes will come with a host of new software features provided by Serial 1s new partnership with Google Cloud. The company says that Google Cloud has selected Serial 1 as its new strategic eMobility partner, meaning the e-bike maker will be among the first to integrate Googles software products into its vehicles.

The software-enabled e-bikes will allow owners to track their trips, collect data, and significantly improve safety and security, Serial 1 says. It reflects a trend in the e-bike industry to install bikes with cloud-connected software as an additional selling point.

The centerpiece of the new partnership will be the Serial 1 app, in which owners can see turn-by-turn navigation, collect ride data, and control security features on their bike. Serial 1 is promising more high-tech features to come thanks to the companys access to Google Cloud analytics and business intelligence and integration with Google Cloud AI functionality.

Google Cloud will also ensure a stronger connection between the bike and the users smartphone. Most e-bikes use Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone app, but Serial 1s bikes will use cellular and GPS technology, in addition to Bluetooth, to ensure owners can connect to their bikes even when they are not in their line of sight.

Just a quick refresher: Serial 1 is a standalone electric bike company that spun out from Harley-Davidson in October 2020. Its current lineup includes four bikes, ranging in price from $3,399 to $4,999. The brand names are Mosh/Cty, a city bike, and the commuter Rush/Cty, which comes in three variants (regular, Step-Thru, and Speed). Each comes with a mid-drive motor capable of generating 250W of continuous power and hitting top speeds of 20mph except for the Rush/Cty Speed, which can go 28mph.

The powertrains will be the same in the second-generation bikes. Most of the major changes are under the surface. These include improved security features, such as flashing lights, disabled pedal-assist functionality, and real-time locations.

The Serial 1 app will integrate with Google Maps to provide better navigation, for example, by prioritizing routes with bike lanes. Serial 1s simplified digital displays are supplied by Brose, a German company that also makes the bikes powertrain, so users will likely have to mount their smartphones on the handlebars to benefit from these types of features.

The app will also feature a virtual garage in which owners can name, track, and digitally manage their e-bikes. This will include a new dashboard for owners to monitor their bikes ride data, including speed, distance, range, power output (both for the rider and the battery), efficiency, and state-of-charge, among other metrics. Serial 1 owners can record their rides to learn more about their performance and progress. And the app will provide automatic service updates when their bikes are in need of a tune-up.

The physical look and controls for the second-generation bikes will remain largely the same. I loved the bikes when I got to test them out last year. The same team that developed the batteries for Harley-Davidson electric LiveWire motorcycles also developed batteries for Serial 1. The integrated batteries are mounted very low on the frame, which helps with the mass centralization and improved handling.

With this new update, its clear Serial 1 is taking aim at major manufacturers like Giant, Trek, and Specialized, which sell premium e-bikes for high-end customers. Specialized, in particular, has been touting the connected software in its Turbo lineup. And like Harley-Davidson, the company just announced that it was spinning out its own brand called Globe that will exclusively focus on utility e-bikes.

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Harley-Davidson's updated Serial 1 e-bikes will feature Google Cloud connectivity - The Verge

In the tech space, the tools at our disposal and the associated terminology fluctuate more than the late, great Prince decided to change his stage name. This time up, the Artist Formerly Known as Universal Analytics had a career makeover and would prefer to go by Google Analytics 4 moving forward. However, the name is just the beginning of the new look and sound of Googles metrics tool, and their new album drops sometime in July of 2023. After next summer, Google will phase Universal Analytics out and retire it forever. As the deadline for this pivot approaches, lets talk about what this means for your law firm, how this change may benefit your marketing efforts in the future, and what simple steps you can take to prepare. Keep reading for a breakdown of everything you need to know about Google Analytics 4 for Law Firms.

At inception, the primary deficiency of Universal Analytics was not always a weakness. When Google dropped this release, Universal Analyticss method of collecting data for your marketing team to interpret was a strength. At its launch, UA was revolutionary. Technological advances have given way to more effective means of acquiring data and led to the antiquation of Universal Analytics. Why? Because Google Analytics 4 uses event-based tracking, as opposed to session-based.

When a user visits your website, Universal Analytics records this data as a session. The session can encompass a window of several hours and include other users. On the surface, this sounds fine, but within these sessions are potential clients who may not be interested in your law firm. Before Google Analytics 4, it was hard to figure out how to weed these undesirable user impressions.

Now, Google has switched to an event-based model, which records users interaction with a website as a unique individual event. The metadata associated with these events are logged, and you can target ads to people you and your marketing team feel would be your ideal client.

Referencing some of the issues raised with tracking cookies, Google created this new platform to address security and privacy issues among their users and improve your ability to advertise effectively, leading to more frequent media buys. (There has to be something in it for them, right?)

The session-based model is somewhat incomplete as more websites push to keep the information about who visits their site private in a bid to uphold the public trust. If you envision the user experience as a destination on a map, its like drawing a line between two points and erasing random sections. You may see a path from a distance, but its incomplete and valuable data lies in those gaps. Additionally, on that map, you may see the course of other users overlap with the path youre focused on, and it muddies the waters.

The event-based model tethers one users activity to a thread that tracks them, their devices, and their habits in a resolute way. This allows you to target ads to someone without Google revealing the users identity until theyre knocking on your law firms door. Hopefully, youve attracted a qualified lead in the process without breaking user trust. This event-based model draws the path of a potential client with a fat magic marker and erases the tracks of other users who may not be an ideal fit for your law firms area of expertise.

You may be asking yourself, Should I switch to Google Analytics 4? The answer to that question should be an emphatic yes, so imagine someone screaming it in your ear. The future is here, and Googles July 2023 caveat is not like the rolling deadline to convert your drivers license to RealID. Your law firm needs to be prepared to bid bon voyage to Universal Analytics when next summer hits. Taking the time now to talk about the future means youre ready to stay ahead of the competition and learn how to reach your ideal clients before your competitor knows how.

Takeaway:

As of July 2023, Google will phase out Universal Analytics in favor of Google Analytics 4, switching from a session-based to an event-based tracking model. This shift changes how Google records data, treating each instance of a users interaction with a website as its own timestamped event rather than a session that may encompass several hours and many other users. These events are unique to a degree and revamp the session-based model that targets potential clients with users of different habits in your ads through nothing more than the limitations of the programming itself. Now, advertisers can target ads with more precision using data that reveals more about a user while maintaining their privacy and upholding trust with your firm. The result is an ad campaign that may reach more potential clients because the data holds the secrets of generating impressions that leave an impression on the right people.

As Google Analytics 4 is integrated into use, so will Good2bSocials ability to help ease the transition for your firm.

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Everything Law Firms Need to Know About Google Analytics 4 - JD Supra

Over the coming weeks, AT&T is rolling out cellphone location tracking thats designed to route emergency calls to 911 more quickly. The company says the new feature will be nationwide by the end of June and should make it easier for, say, an ambulance to reach someone experiencing a medical emergency. At first glance, it seems like a no-brainer. But its also a reminder that as phone companies promise to save lives, theyre also using a lot more data about you in the process.

The AT&T upgrade is part of a broader effort to modernize the countrys approach to emergency response. T-Mobile has also started using location-based routing, and experts told Recode that the technology could eventually be universal. At the same time, the federal government is in the midst of a nationwide push to get 911 call centers to adopt a technology called Next Generation 911, which will allow people not only to call 911 but also to send texts including images and video messages to the emergency line.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google have created new software that can directly pass on information from someones device, like information stored on a health app. The hope is that more data will save crucial time during emergencies, but privacy experts are already warning that the same technology could be misused or exploited.

Get the best of Recode's essential reporting on tech and business news.

I just worry what happens the next time theres a tragedy, the next time people are scared, and the next time theres an opportunity to use this data in ways it was never intended, Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), told Recode.

One of the main ways phone networks plan to use this data is to connect callers with the right 911 operator more quickly. Because the 911 system was designed to work with landlines, calls to 911 made via cellphones (mobile phones place the majority of 911 calls) sometimes get routed to the wrong 911 center. In places that use older technology, cellphones will generally connect to the 911 operator associated with the antenna on the cell tower that processes the call, not the 911 operator in the jurisdiction the person calling is currently in. When these calls are misdirected, it can sometimes take several minutes to be connected to the right dispatcher.

To address this problem, carriers are turning to the sensors in smartphones, like GPS, wifi antennas, accelerometers, and pressure sensors. Depending on the phone you have, either Apple or Google can then use these sensors to estimate your current location. (Googles system is called Emergency Location Service, or ELS, and Apples system is called Hybridized Emergency Location, or HELO.) With AT&Ts and T-Mobiles new systems, when someone makes a call to 911, the phone network will use this location estimate to make a best guess as to where someone is, and then connect the call to the right 911 operator. AT&T says the whole process should take about five seconds and is supposed to locate someones call within 50 meters of their actual location.

This isnt the only data 911 centers have at their disposal. Apple already allows people to load their medical information like what health conditions they have and medications theyre on into their devices, and depending on the technology used by the jurisdiction youre in, that info could be automatically sent to emergency responders when they dial 911. Some Apple Watch models also have a built-in fall detector that can dial 911 on its own.

Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ordered carriers to start transmitting vertical location data in addition to horizontal location data, making it easier for first responders to identify what floor someone might be on in a multistory building during an emergency. And as the federal government rolls out Next Generation 911, its also laying the groundwork for 911 operators to collect data from other connected devices, like cars with certain crash notification systems, building sensors, and wearables. This is all in addition to a host of other changes that a growing number of the countrys thousands of 911 call centers have been slowly making: upgrading software, sharing and collecting more analytics, and just getting better training. The idea behind all of these updates is that, with more information, dispatchers can make better decisions about an unfolding situation.

A lot of the underlying efforts around transforming 911 is really trying to help the current nations 911 system, prioritize health and safety for call takers and dispatchers, and really just trying to ensure that the right person is being dispatched at the right time, explains Tiffany Russell, the mental health and justice partnerships project director at the Pew Charitable Trusts. This police-first model is not necessarily the best response to handle these really complex problems or issues related to mental health.

In an emergency, more information could be helpful, but there are also reasons to worry about 911 collecting additional data. Allowing 911 operators to receive image- and video-based messages could create new opportunities for racial bias, Russell points out, and texting may not be the most efficient way for an operator to communicate during an emergency. The 911 system has played a fundamental role in and contributed to some of American policings worst problems, including over-policing, racist police violence, and deeply flawed approaches to domestic violence and behavioral health.

Another growing concern is data privacy. While AT&T told Recode that location data is only used when a 911 call is in progress, there are circumstances where 911 operators can directly request that information from a carrier, even if the person who made the call has hung up, according to Brandon Abley, the director of technology at the National Emergency Number Association. There is no way for an individual user to disable the location information sent during 911 calls.

These concerns with the 911 system arent new. When the FCC rolled out enhanced 911 an early program to improve the kind of information 911 operators receive about wireless callers civil liberties organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned about the risk that federal agencies could try to access the data created by the new technology, or it could end up in the wrong hands. A recent FBI guide to cellular data shows that law enforcement does sometimes try to collect data created by carriers enhanced 911 capabilities. Its also abundantly clear that cellphone location data generally isnt well protected. Agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have bought app-created location data on the open market, and as long as they have the right legal paperwork, law enforcement can reach out to any company that collects data about someone and ask for information.

They are not responsible with our data, there are not proper assurances in the law to limit how they use it, Andrs Arrieta, the director of consumer privacy engineering at EFF, told Recode. Sometimes even when there are, they keep misusing it.

These risks stand to get a lot more serious and a lot murkier as 911 centers across the country start receiving far more data from peoples devices. This could take some time, since 911 call centers are generally run on the local level and vary considerably in terms of the technology they use. Still, its critical to remember that even if a new service is designed or marketed as a new way to save lives, theres no guarantee thats the only way it will be deployed.

This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you dont miss the next one!

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How AT&T, Google, and Apple are shaping the future of 911 - Vox.com

Google has wrapped up its two-hour-long I/O keynote, which was absolutely packed with news. We heard about AI, Android, and, of course, a plethora of Pixel hardware. Here are the biggest announcements we saw on Wednesday.

Google announced its new mid-tier phone, the Pixel 6A, which will cost $449 when its available for preorder on July 21st. The company seems to be flipping its usual script for this phone previous A models have featured a camera comparable to the one found on Googles flagship Pixels but had weaker processors. The 6A, though, has the Pixel 6s Tensor chip and design but opts for a 12-megapixel camera versus the 50MP one on the standard 6.

Oh, and despite the fact that Google released a two-minute ad about the Pixel 5As headphone jack last year, the 6A doesnt have one. Womp womp.

The Pixel Watchs hardware was thoroughly leaked, so its no surprise that its showing up on this list, but Googles finally given us a look at what the software will be like. The wearable will run an updated version of Wear OS 3 and will feature a Fitbit integration that lets you keep track of your health metrics. There are still some unanswered (and very important) questions about the watch, though: we dont know what kind of chip itll be powered by nor do we know how much itll cost. Its slated to launch later this fall alongside the Pixel 7.

Oh right. Yes, Google teased the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro with a few renders, showing that the phones will have some slightly different camera cutouts and back panel. Like Googles current Pixels, the 7 and 7 Pro will have two and three cameras, respectively. The pink color will apparently be gone, though, so Ill never be happy again.

Lets not beat around the bush here: Google has announced its version of Apples AirPods Pro. The Pixel Buds Pro will cost $199, feature active noise cancellation, and have an estimated seven hours of battery life when youre using ANC. Google says the Buds have a custom audio chip and that theyll support Bluetooth multipoint, letting them connect to two devices at once. Thats a neat trick and one thats not particularly common in the earbud world. Theyll also come in several colors, including black, red, and green, and will be available to preorder on July 21st.

Google announced that it plans to release an Android-powered tablet next year to act as a perfect companion for Pixel with a larger form factor. The writing for this one has been on the wall for a while. (Android 12L focused on large-screen experiences, and there have been some tablet-related hires over in Mountain View.) But its good to hear that Google is looking to get into tablets again. The only real hardware detail we have about Googles upcoming device is that itll have a Tensor chip in it.

Right at the end of its presentation, Google showed off a pair of AR glasses that were capable of real-time translation during a conversation. There are pretty much no details on whether this will be a product people can buy, but its certainly interesting to see more hints of Googles plan for joining companies like Snap and Meta in the race to put AR on your face.

As is often the case, Googles I/O presentation was chock-full of AI news. Perhaps the biggest is that its going to start letting people test its language model. Not just anyone will be able to try out LaMDA 2, but eventually, Google hopes to bring the tech to search and its other products (though it wants to do so very slowly).

There were a bunch of smaller AI-related stories as well. Google announced that its auto-generated translations are coming to YouTube on mobile, that youll be able to just look at your Nest Hub Max and start talking to the assistant, and that your phone will be able to look at a shelf full of chocolate bars and pick one out for you based on what youre looking for. That last one Google described as a supercharged Ctrl-F for the world around you.

The companys also expanding its multisearch feature, which lets you search along multiple axes. For example, you can give Google a picture of a specific type of cuisine youre looking for and ask it where you can find that nearby.

Google had a whole set of security and privacy announcements, including plans for the My Ad Center interface: a hub that will let users customize the types of ads they see by selecting from a range of topics they are interested in or opt to see fewer ads on a given topic. It also said the company is focused on implementing additional security features for its products by default, in addition to the concept of protected computing to do more processing on-device rather than sending data elsewhere.

Google went over its plans for Android 13, and the next version of its mobile OS seems to be going further with the ideas introduced in Android 12. The company is adding Material You themes to more places, letting you set apps to use different languages, and adding a few security and privacy features. That doesnt add up to an earth-shattering release, but as my colleague Jon Porter points out, thats probably a good thing. Android 12 has been a bit messy, so a year of refinements and small improvements is probably warranted.

For those who want to try it out, the beta is available today.

Google is bringing back its Wallet app as a place to hold not just your payment cards, but your passes, rewards program memberships, vaccination records, and more. Google says the app is built for the age of digital identity. While I realize thats probably the future, that knowledge doesnt make me miss my physical Google Wallet debit card any less.

Googles adding a new mode to Maps, which is basically Street View from the sky in select cities, youll be able to get an overview of a location to get a better view of the geography before getting lost in the streets below.

Update May 11th, 3:25PM ET: Added Googles surprise AR glasses preview.

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Google's biggest announcements at I/O 2022 - The Verge

Google has announced that its bringing back the Wallet app as a place to manage payment cards, gift cards, rewards cards, passes, and more. Wallet used to be a standalone app before it was folded into Google Pay. Now, the company is making it a separate app again, saying that consumers and companies alike are pushing for digital cards.

Wallet will be the app you use to store and manage your debit and credit cards on Android. (Youll be able to use it across Googles ecosystem in apps like Google Pay and on the web via Chrome Autocomplete.) But Google wants it to be much more than just a way to store credit and rewards cards. The company is also pitching Wallet as the place to keep your transit cards, proof of vaccination, tickets to events, and even your government-issued ID and car keys.

Older versions of Google Wallet had similar (if more limited) aspirations, but Google says other companies are now more ready to provide people with digital cards and identification to fill the app up. For example, some hotels have shown that theyre willing to provide digital room keys, and some state governments in the US are working on issuing digital drivers licenses. Apple has also been working on adding these kinds of use cases to its own Wallet app, which Googles offering seems very similar to. Thats not to say that Googles copying Apple here, but it could have some catching up to do since Apples been pushing this kind of experience for years.

Timing and context matter, said Bill Ready, Googles president of commerce and payments, in an interview with The Verge. He said that companies and other institutions want to provide users with a way to store their info digitally, and Google Wallet will be one of the places they can do that. Ready said that the companys trying to build Wallet on a bed of open ecosystems, which he thinks will open up a plethora of new use cases.

As an example of what that could look like, Ready talked about Google Wallets integration with Google Maps. If you have your transit pass stored in Google Wallet, youll be able to see how much moneys left on it when youre viewing possible routes in Maps, which can also tell you how much a certain ride will cost. If you dont have enough on your pass to cover fares, Maps could even let you add more funds from within the app using the payment card stored in Wallet.

Of course, all of this has to be supported by the specific transit system youre trying to use, but Ready said that transit providers were some of the most enthusiastic organizations when it came to digital identity. Googles going to be reliant on third parties for many of the features its trying to add to Wallet, but Ready thinks its open-ecosystem approach will help and that companies generally wont have to pay to integrate into Wallet.

How this rollout will go also depends on where in the world you are: in a lot of countries, the Google Pay app is becoming Google Wallet. Thats not the case in the US and Singapore, though in those countries, Wallet will be a separate app, while Pay will stay around as a payments-centered app that helps people pay friends and save and manage money. In India, Google Pay is staying the same.

The move toward Wallet as a standalone app that integrates into other apps makes a lot of sense to me. While many of the features Googles promising for Wallet are currently available in Google Pay or Android itself, they dont necessarily fit in there Im not really paying for anything when Im using my boarding pass to get on a plane, but itd totally make sense to keep something like that in my wallet.

Its also nice to be able to manage all your cards in one place (like you can with, say, a physical wallet), and Google Pay just has too much other stuff going on to be great at that. Unlike Pay, Wallet is just going to be on Android to start, but youll be able to access some of the information you put in it on other platforms. Some things, like digital IDs, will likely be locked to a single device.

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Google thinks the time is right to bring back Wallet - The Verge

SAN FRANCISCO There was a time when Google offered a wondrous vision of the future, with driverless cars, augmented-reality eyewear, unlimited storage of emails and photos, and predictive texts to complete sentences in progress.

A more modest Google was on display on Wednesday as the company kicked off its annual developers conference. The Google of 2022 is more pragmatic and sensible a bit more like its business-focused competitors at Microsoft than a fantasy play land for tech enthusiasts.

And that, by all appearances, is by design. The bold vision is still out there but its a ways away. The professional executives who now run Google are increasingly focused on wringing money out of those years of spending on research and development.

The companys biggest bet in artificial intelligence does not, at least for now, mean science fiction come to life. It means more subtle changes to existing products.

A.I. is improving our products, making them more helpful, more accessible, and delivering innovative new features for everyone, Sundar Pichai, Googles chief executive, said on Wednesday.

In a presentation short of wow moments, Google stressed that its products were helpful. In fact, Google executives used the words help, helping, or helpful more than 50 times during two hours of keynote speeches, including a marketing campaign for its new hardware products with the line: When it comes to helping, we cant help but help.

It introduced a cheaper version of its Pixel smartphone, a smartwatch with a round screen and a new tablet coming next year. (The most helpful tablet in the world.)

The biggest applause came from a new Google Docs feature in which the companys artificial-intelligence algorithms automatically summarize a long document into a single paragraph.

At the same time, it was not immediately clear how some of the other groundbreaking work, like language models that better understand natural conversation or that can break down a task into logical smaller steps, will ultimately lead to the next generation of computing that Google has touted.

Certainly some of the new ideas do appear helpful. In one demonstration about how Google continues to improve its search technology, the company showed a feature called multisearch, in which a user can snap a photo of a shelf full of chocolates and then find the best-reviewed dark chocolate bar without nuts from the picture.

In another example, Google showed how you can find a picture of a specific dish, like Korean stir-fried noodles, and then search for nearby restaurants serving that dish.

Much of those capabilities are powered by the deep technological work Google has done for years using so-called machine learning, image recognition and natural language understanding. Its a sign of an evolution rather than revolution for Google and other large tech giants.

Many companies can build digital services easier and faster than in the past because of shared technologies such as cloud computing and storage, but building the underlying infrastructure such as artificial intelligence language models is so costly and time-consuming that only the richest companies can invest in them.

As is often the case at Google events, the company didnt spend a lot of time explaining how it makes money. Google brought up the topic of advertising which still accounts for 80 percent of the companys revenue after an hour of other announcements, highlighting a new feature called My Ad Center. It will allow users to request fewer ads from certain brands or to highlight topics they would like to see more ads about.

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Googles I/O Conference Offers Modest Vision of the Future - The New York Times

At the end of its I/O presentation on Wednesday, Google pulled out a one more thing-type surprise. In a short video, Google showed off a pair of augmented reality glasses that have one purpose displaying audible language translations right in front of your eyeballs. In the video, Google product manager Max Spear called the capability of this prototype subtitles for the world, and we see family members communicating for the first time.

Now hold on just a second. Like many people, weve used Google Translate before and largely think of it as a very impressive tool that happens to make a lot of embarrassing misfires. While we might trust it to get us directions to the bus, thats nowhere near the same thing as trusting it to correctly interpret and relay our parents childhood stories. And hasnt Google said its finally breaking down the language barrier before?

In 2017, Google marketed real-time translation as a feature of its original Pixel Buds. Our former colleague Sean OKane described the experience as a laudable idea with a lamentable execution and reported that some of the people he tried it with said it sounded like he was a five-year-old. Thats not quite what Google showed off in its video.

Also, we dont want to brush past the fact that Googles promising that this translation will happen inside a pair of AR glasses. Not to hit at a sore spot, but the reality of augmented reality hasnt really even caught up to Googles concept video from a decade ago. You know, the one that acted as a predecessor to the much-maligned and embarrassing-to-wear Google Glass?

To be fair, Googles AR translation glasses seem much more focused than what Glass was trying to accomplish. From what Google showed, theyre meant to do one thing display translated text not act as an ambient computing experience that could replace a smartphone. But even then, making AR glasses isnt easy. Even a moderate amount of ambient light can make viewing text on see-through screens very difficult. Its challenging enough to read subtitles on a TV with some glare from the sun through a window; now imagine that experience but strapped to your face (and with the added pressure of engaging in a conversation with someone that you cant understand on your own).

But hey, technology moves quickly Google may be able to overcome a hurdle that has stymied its competitors. That wouldnt change the fact that Google Translate is not a magic bullet for cross-language conversation. If youve ever tried having an actual conversation through a translation app, then you probably know that you must speak slowly. And methodically. And clearly. Unless you want to risk a garbled translation. One slip of the tongue, and you might just be done.

People dont converse in a vacuum or like machines do. Just like we code-switch when speaking to voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, or the Google Assistant, we know we have to use much simpler sentences when were dealing with machine translation. And even when we do speak correctly, the translation can still come out awkward and misconstrued. Some of our Verge colleagues fluent in Korean pointed out that Googles own pre-roll countdown for I/O displayed an honorific version of Welcome in Korean that nobody actually uses.

That mildly embarrassing flub pales in comparison to the fact that, according to tweets from Rami Ismail and Sam Ettinger, Google showed over half a dozen backwards, broken, or otherwise incorrect scripts on a slide during its Translate presentation. (Android Police notes that a Google employee has acknowledged the mistake, and that its been corrected in the YouTube version of the keynote.) To be clear, its not that we expect perfection but Googles trying to tell us that its close to cracking real-time translation, and those kinds of mistakes make that seem incredibly unlikely.

Google is trying to solve an immensely complicated problem. Translating words is easy; figuring out grammar is difficult but possible. But language and communication are far more complex than just those two things. As a relatively simple example, Antonios mother speaks three languages (Italian, Spanish, and English). Shell sometimes borrow words from language to language mid-sentence including her regional Italian dialect (which is like a fourth language). That type of thing is relatively easy for a human to parse, but could Googles prototype glasses deal with it? Never mind the messier parts of conversation like unclear references, incomplete thoughts, or innuendo.

Its not that Googles goal isnt admirable. We absolutely want to live in a world where everyone gets to experience what the research participants in the video do, staring with wide-eyed wonderment as they see their loved ones words appear before them. Breaking down language barriers and understanding each other in ways we couldnt before is something the world needs way more of; its just that theres a long way to go before we reach that future. Machine translation is here and has been for a long time. But despite the plethora of languages it can handle, it doesnt speak human yet.

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Google's AR translation glasses are still just vaporware - The Verge

Theres a good chance youve spent much of the last two-plus years sitting at home, cycling through endless days of virtual meetings staring into your laptops webcam and talking into your built-in mic. This means youve spent much of the last two-plus years appearing to everyone else like a mushy pile of poorly lit pixels, sounding like youre shouting from inside a tin can. Its not your fault: your laptops webcam just sucks. And so does its mic. But Google thinks it can fix them both with AI.

Google announced on Wednesday at its annual I/O developer conference that its Workspace team has been working on a couple of AI-powered ways to improve your virtual meetings. The most impressive is Portrait Restore, which Google says can automatically improve and sharpen your image even over a bad connection or through a bad camera. Portrait Lighting, similarly, gives you a set of AI-based controls over how youre lit. You cant move the window off to your left, Google seems to be saying, but you can make Google Meet look as if you had one to your right as well. And when it comes to sound, Googles rolling out a de-reverberation tool meant to minimize the echoes that come from talking into your laptop from a boxy home office.

A lot of the underlying tech here comes from the AI and machine learning work Google has done with its Pixel phones. Those have substantially better hardware to work with than your average laptop webcam, but Prasad Setty, the companys VP of digital work experience, said the principle is the same. We want to make sure that the underlying software does the same thing, that we are able to use it across a wide range of hardware devices, he said.

As hybrid and remote work have grown, the Google Workspace team has spent the last couple of years thinking about how to make work a little easier, Setty said. We want technology to be an enabler, Setty said in an interview. We want it to be helpful, we want it to be intuitive, and we want it to solve real problems. That led the Workspace team to think more about collaboration hence the meeting tools but also about how to make asynchronous work more palatable.

Googles planning to roll out a new tool that generates automatic summaries of Spaces activity, so you can log on in the morning and catch up without having to read hundreds of messages. Its also launching an automated transcription service for Meet meetings, with plans to eventually also summarize those.

We want to be able to help people handle this information overload, Setty said, and use AI to do so. He also said Googles thinking a lot about collaboration equity and representation equity, trying to help keep everyone on an equal playing field no matter where they are, what tech theyre using, or how theyre working. One trick for Google, Setty acknowledged, is in helping people without getting too involved or making employees feel like theyre being watched by either Google or their employer. The way we think about it, he said, is we want to empower users first and foremost. And then give them like the choice of like how they expose that information to their teams and so on.

After all this time stuck at home, its nice to have a few tools to make your setup work a little better, especially ones that dont require new apps or gear. But as people go back to the office, Google has an even bigger meeting challenge ahead: solving the problem of the hybrid meeting, with some people in a room and others on a screen. Thats going to take a lot more than good lighting and de-reverb.

Excerpt from:

Google is adding tools to make Meet video calls look better - The Verge

Google is getting back in the tablet game. The companys internal hardware division plans to release an Android-powered tablet in 2023, senior vice president of devices and services Rick Osterloh announced on Wednesday at its I/O developer conference. Osterloh was light on details, except to say itll run on the same Tensor processor inside Googles latest Pixel phones and that he imagines it as a consumer-focused gadget focused on entertainment and consumption rather than work. (The Verges Dan Seifert, who briefly saw a picture during a product briefing ahead of I/O, immediately said it looks like an old Samsung tablet.) But Osterlohs overall message is clear: Google cares about Android tablets. For real this time.

The announcement is a huge about-face from Googles recent history. In 2019, when Osterloh himself said Google was getting out of the tablet business. Hey, its true, he tweeted in response to rumors that Google was shutting down its existing tablet products, Googles HARDWARE team will be solely focused on building laptops moving forward, though he again said the software teams still care about supporting tablets. That announcement seemed to chill the market, as if signaling that Google was never going to get serious about tablets. Since then, few companies outside of Samsung have continued to make Android slates.

So why the change of heart? We see it as a critical part of how people are interacting with media and computers at home, especially, Osterloh said in an interview ahead of I/O. Google seems to think of Chrome OS as mostly a tool for work and school, while Android is the consumer product. (Osterloh did say Google plans to make more Pixelbooks, by the way, but he wouldnt say when.) And the pandemic made it clearer than ever to Google that tablets have a unique place in users lives as entertainment, gaming, and general consumption devices. (Youd think a decade-plus of Apples iPad success would have made that clear already, but alas.) And certainly, we think we want to design something thats a perfect companion for Pixel with a larger form factor, he said.

One way to understand the Pixel lineup in general is less as a product organization designed to sell lots of devices and more as a showpiece of Googles intentions. Google isnt just building a flagship tablet it hopes lots of people will buy; its building a flagship tablet so that Android developers in and out of Google will believe Google actually cares about these devices and will have a reason to care about how their apps look on a larger screen. Google cant build a great tablet if it cant start that flywheel. Solving its tablet problem will take more than great hardware and even more than dedicated focus from the entire team at Google. It requires the whole ecosystem to decide its worth giving a crap when Google has given them a decade of reasons not to.

Luckily, Google knows that better than anyone. In the early days of Android, back when Googles in-house hardware projects were called Nexus rather than Pixel, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 were some of the best tablet hardware on the market. But Android tablets never caught on, in large part because Android was never well-suited to tablets and Google never seemed to care. Apps mostly treated tablets like phones with humongous screens rather than a device category unto themselves, so they showed up big and misfit and generally didnt work right.

Internally, at least, that appears to be changing. The Android team has been investing a ton in the space, Osterloh said. Starting with Android 12L and continuing with some new features in Android 13, like an updated taskbar with an app drawer that makes it easier to use two apps side by side, the OS is at long last starting to look optimized for larger screens. The Pixel Tablet (or whatever its called) will be a showcase for that work. We wanted to make sure people knew about it so that they knew not only is this a big thing for the Android team, but its a big thing for our team, too. And we intend to be in this category, starting then and going forward forever.

Trystan Upstill, a VP of engineering on the Android team, said that his team has also been working with third-party developers on adapting their apps to the larger displays. We have TikTok, Zoom, and Facebook building out new apps this year for tablet, he said in an interview, and many more coming as well. Googles also updating 20 of its own apps Google Maps, Google Messages, YouTube Music, and more for tablets over the next few weeks. Thats a strong sign of progress, but the fact that those updates are only coming now says a lot about Googles history in the space.

Googles focus on tablets may also have something to do with the state of smartphones. As foldable phones become more popular, theyre also becoming one of the most compelling reasons to pick an Android device over an iPhone. Except, all too often, Android doesnt work great on the larger foldable screens, either. The distinction, of course, is they have two screens, Upstill said. And the layout changes make a big difference. But what were doing for tablets is translating directly to improvements for foldables as well.

And if youre rooting for Android tablets to be great, you should be rooting for foldables to be successful. Because its not hard to imagine a world in which Google really tries to make Android tablets work again only to discover that Apples iPad and Microsofts Surface are so far ahead that its going to be impossible to catch up and decide to just move on to something newer and shinier. Foldables could keep Googles focus on big screens much longer, though, if they are indeed the next big thing in smartphones.

Osterloh seems to be serious about bringing the Pixel shine to the Android tablet world. But if Googles going to pull off a successful launch next year, its going to need help. And fast.

Read more:

Google's Pixel team is working on an Android tablet for 2023 - The Verge

Faisal Masud knows what it takes to make a multibillion-dollar company thrive.

The 49-year-old spent more than two decades working his way up the executive ranks at Amazon, Google, eBay and Staples. Now, he's trying to implement lessons from those successful firms as the CEO of Fabric, a Seattle-based e-commerce start-up that launched in 2016 and is valued at $1.5 billion. (The company stylizes its name as "fabric," to avoid confusion with online insurance company Fabric Technologies.)

Masud was recruited as CEO in 2020 by co-founder Ryan Bartley, with whom he'd worked closely at Staples. Upon stepping into the role, Masud says, he worked to take what he'd learned from his previous employers to create a culture at Fabric that champions empathy, efficiency and most of all success.

"Culturally, we've built a company that's sort of a hybrid of all the companies I've worked at," Masud tells CNBC Make It. "We're able to take the best pieces out of the places I've had experiences and apply those."

Fabric makes e-commerce software that essentially competes with platforms like Shopify and Salesforce, though Masud notes that Fabric is tailored specifically for mid-size and large businesses. That pitch is apparently music to the ears of investors, who have plowed north of $293 million into the company.

Part of Masud's success at Fabric has been a long time coming. He says he learned how a work culture could impact a company's bottom line from Amazon, where he spent nearly a decade following the dot-com bubble.

At Fabric, Masud preaches "ownership," one of Jeff Bezos' famous 14 key leadership principles: Having a team of employees or a single team leader "own" an idea or project can make the decision-making process more streamlined and effective. Masud says he's worked in environments without ownership, and things got messy.

"When something failed, it was nobody's fault. When something was successful, everybody got to celebrate," he says. "That's not how start-ups work. Someone has to make a decision."

After Masud left Amazon, he spent years at Google and eBay, picking up a new workplace skill that stood out in direct contrast to Amazon's culture: empathy.

"Being very empathetic towards your employees was also very important, because that's something Google does really well, and so does eBay, whereas Amazon was not that great at that," says Masud, who was a senior director of shipping at eBay until 2012 and COO of Alphabet's Project Wing drone delivery division from 2018 to 2020.

Today, the "No. 1 value" Masud tries to instill at Fabric is born from those lessons in workplace empathy: "Seek to understand before being understood." Ensuring a "built in" sense of empathy across the company, he says, ultimately leads to better end results for the bottom line.

"Listening attentively, versus just because you have to, brings about a thought process that's different to just executing quickly," he says. "Our culture is sort of embedded in the fact that we're good listeners. But we also use data and facts to make our decisions at the end of the day."

Working with high-profile start-up founders like Bezos and Google's Sergey Brin also taught Masud the value of long-term thinking and staying focused on only the core areas where your company excels.

"These founders are always looking extremely long term," Masud says. "They're always looking at: 'OK, what's the ultimate goal of where the company's got to go?' And then find a way to avoid the distractions along the way."

Masud brought along several high-level employees who also previously worked at Amazon to help instill some of those lessons at Fabric. He refers to them as the "Amazon mafia," and their experience with their former employer could come in handy: Amazon recently launched a "Buy With Prime" service that rivals platforms like Shopify and Fabric.

Bringing in ex-Amazon employees doesn't necessarily mean Masud is trying to recreate Amazon's culture. "I don't think every Amazonian is the right fit for Fabric," he says, adding that he instead tried to "hand select" specific people who agreed with his vision for Fabric's culture.

Together, Masud says, the lessons he learned at his previous workplaces prepared him surprisingly well to be a CEO: "As one of our investors put it: 'You worked for the last two decades to build Fabric. You just didn't know it.'"

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This 49-year-old CEO used lessons from Amazon and Google to build a $1.5 billion start-up - CNBC