Category Archives: Google

In conjunction with itsGoogle I/Oconference,Google published a pinball gameTuesday that's geared to show off one of the company's favorite programming tools.

The pinball game is made with Flutter, a framework meant to help developers write software that'll work on Google's Android, Apple's iOS and the web. You can try it by loading the website in a browser.

Very Good Ventureswrote the app over the last 10 weeks, Chief Executive David DeRemersaid Wednesday. Curious developers can check out Google's Flutter talk from Google I/O.

At Google I/O, Google announced several new products, including its lower end Pixel 6A smartphone, new Pixel Buds Pro earbudsandupdates to its Android 13 beta. And it teased some upcoming offerings, including its Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones and Pixel Watch, coming this fall, and its Pixel tablet due in 2023.

On Android, the pinball app will ask if you want to install it as an app on your home screen. That illustrates Google's effort to blur the boundaries between web apps and native smartphone apps that run natively on iOS or Android.

Flutter plays a role in that effort. It's easy to craft an app that runs on either of the two smartphone families, the web, Windows and MacOS, DeRemer said. "It's truly one thing that can do almost anything," he said of Flutter.

The pinball game also uses a game engine called Flame designed to speed up game development, Google developers said in a blog post Tuesday.

Cross-platform programming can be tough because of interface differences, but the pinball game makes some accommodations. On a desktop browser, you use right and left arrows to operate the flippers. On phones, you tap the left and right sides of the screen.

But factors like different screen sizes can mean hiccups. In one test with Chrome on a Google Pixel 6 Pro, a phone with a relatively narrow screen, the rocket icon used to launch the ball is mostly off the edge of the screen.

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Google I/O Pinball Game Shows How Apps Can Span Phones and the Web - CNET

After almost a year of waiting, we finally know when Google Assistant will arrive on Samsungs Galaxy Watch 4 lineup. Kind of. In a blog, Samsung executive vice president Patrick Chomet announced the long-awaited feature will arrive this summer. As for when this summer, its anybodys guess.

Chomet writes that Google Assistant on Wear OS 3 will enable faster and more natural voice interactions as well as the ability to look up quick answers while on the go. He also noted that it would be possible to control Spotify with Google Assistant on the watch.

A big reason why Samsung opted to work with Google to create a unified Wear OS 3 platform was the Google Play Store. Samsungs smartwatches had historically been a way for it to push its ecosystem of products and services, including its voice assistant Bixby. The promise of Wear OS 3 was that Android users would get a greater say in which apps and assistants they could use. So if you were someone who hated Bixby with the burning fire of a thousand suns, you could instead download Google Assistant.

The only hitch is that Google and Samsung were never very clear about when Google Assistant would arrive. In updates, both companies tended to use vague allusions that can be summarized as, Its coming. Later. For example, in February, Samsung released some new health features for the Galaxy Watch 4 and merely noted that Google Assistant would arrive in the coming months. Just two weeks ago, Verizon accidentally released an update log that seemed to imply Google Assistant had arrived but that wasnt actually the case.

The timing of this announcement makes a lot of sense. Not only has Google just officially announced the Pixel Watch due later this year but it also noted that other Google services would arrive on the Wear OS platform. That includes Google Home and Google Wallet.

Todays announcement, while vague, at least narrows that time frame. That said, your interpretation of what counts as summer may not be the same as what Google and Samsung have in mind. Many people tend to think of June, July, and August as the summer months. However, if you were to go by equinoxes and solstices, summer 2022 is defined as June 21st to September 22nd. Also, given that the Pixel Watch is slated for this fall, it wouldnt be surprising if we see Google Assistant arrive toward summers end. So, you can expect Google Assistant relatively soon though how soon is still up in the air.

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Samsung says Google Assistant will arrive on Galaxy Watch 4 this summer - The Verge

Google has updated the title it uses for real time analytics in Universal Analytics 3 to read in the last 5 minutes. Previously this section was titled right now but with Google Analytics 4 rolling out, Google wanted to make the title more specific to what both are actually displaying.

In the last 5 minutes. Googles title for the real time metrics was updated to say in the last 5 minutes to more accurately describe what UA3s real time metrics actually displayed. Here is a screenshot of the new title:

Previously, it looked more like this saying right now which is not really right now but in the last 5 minutes.

Why the change. We believe Google made this change in order to help communicate why UA3 real time metrics are different from GA4 real time metrics. UA3 real time metrics are based off the last five minutes whereas GA4 real time metrics are based off the last thirty minutes.

Why we care. When you see this change, dont worry, you are not alone we are all seeing this title change. But rest assured, the metrics in real time Universal Analytics 3 have not changed. Google is just making it crystal clear that UA3 is measuring the past 5 minutes and GA4 is measuring the past 30 minutes.

Keep in mind, both UA3 and GA4 also measure traffic differently so even if they both looked at the past 5 minutes, it would show different numbers.

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Google Universal Analytics real time metrics now titled "in the last 5 minutes" - Search Engine Land

There is more pressure than usual on Google to deliver surprises at I/O 2022. The company is expected to unveil its Pixel Watch, along with a more budget-friendly Pixel 6A, plus the latest slew of new Android 13 software and new features. Who knows? Maybe well see something else entirely.

The stakes are high, as always, for the new stuff to be good, and I dont really doubt Googles ability to impress with these new products. Its rare that Google doesnt have at least a handful of announcements (including a few pie-in-the-sky ones) that show extremely well. After all, what makes I/O fun to watch is that it is a mix of the tech thats within reach, along with some more far-flung stuff.

But what some of us at The Verge are most excited for couldnt sound duller by comparison. Instead of being surprised, we simply want to see if 2022 is the year Google figures out how to make its products relevant, for real people, for the long run. Releasing them is step one, but providing meaningful, long-term support behind these new products and the platforms that they operate on is something that Google still hasnt proven itself capable of even after all these years. Im not just talking about guaranteeing security and OS updates the boring stuff. I want to see Google go out on a limb for these gadgets and ideas like it has more than couch-cushion money to lose.

Follow-through has never been Googles strong suit. Many of its products have languished in ways that lend further credence to Googles infamous reputation for abandoning even its best ideas. There have been so many standout I/O announcements that seemed great but havent lived up to their potential, like Googles Assistant-powered Duplex service that can answer or place calls for you, which has been slow to gain traction even among people who could use it the most. Then there are ones that just straight up never materialized, like the ambitious Project Starline that Google claimed could provide a more realistic video chat experience, with depth sensors to make it look like the other person is sitting across the table.

Looking back on 2021, it failed to make good on the buzz it made on its marquee products. Its Stadia cloud game streaming platform was drastically scaled back in scope less than two years after Google became the first tech giant to go big with game streaming. Android 12 delivered underwhelming changes, and its Material You design widget rollout has been mediocre at best (it should be called Meh-terial you). The Pixel 6 had a buggy launch, which it still hasnt resolved with worthwhile updates. These were the phones that were supposed to signal to people okay, now were serious and prove the value of Googles custom Tensor processors. My Pixel 6 really isnt any more fun to use than my old Pixel 3.

The lack of Googles post-launch care has taken several different forms. My colleague Allison Johnson thought that the Pixel 5A was a safe but great midrange phone that more people should know about. But instead of going global with broad carrier support, as most manufacturers do these days with phones that theyre excited about, Google released the phone exclusively in the US and Japan and didnt partner with carriers to boost availability. Unless youre a Pixel superfan, its possible that this phones existence went under your radar entirely.

Given that approach, it seems as if Google wants to succeed with hardware on its own terms and to fail on its own terms, too. Perhaps this strategy stems from Google realizing that it likely wont ever be in the top spot for many tech hardware categories it participates in. Still, its strange to see this seemingly directionless strategy considering theres proof within Googles business (Google Photos, search, Chrome, Android, and Workspace, just to name a few) that investing heavily yields success.

If you want one representative example to watch out for, its smartwatches. If the biggest pre-I/O rumors are true, Google will unveil its first-ever flagship smartwatch, the Pixel Watch. Its an interesting time for the device to launch, as the bar couldnt be lower for Google to re-enter the smartwatch market after years of letting it evaporate. And I cant help but wonder what might have happened if Google hadnt left in the first place. It was yet another category that Google initially put some muscle behind until it didnt.

Google launched a dedicated smartwatch platform, Android Wear, in 2014 to compete with the Apple Watch. The company got the likes of Samsung, LG, Asus, Motorola, and more onboard to make hardware, each with an interesting spin on design, but each kind of crippled with the same ho-hum software, slow performance, and lousy battery life. Android Wear offered more in the way of options than Apple, but all of those options were, well, not good.

Google continued its software investment in the space, releasing a rebranded Wear OS with more features to turn a new leaf. But the best watches running Googles new software couldnt shake those first-gen issues loose even ones like the LG Watch Style and Sport, which were the flagships meant to carry Wear OS to new heights.

Googles support slowed down, with fewer major updates and even fewer must-have apps. While a few manufacturers like Fossil and Mobvoi have kept the proverbial torch lit (and, more recently, Samsung with its Wear OS 3-powered Galaxy Watch 4), the platform is not in a great place. So, theres a lot riding on Google being able to kickstart it again. But even if the company unveils a promising new product, its possible that Googles biggest chance of success with smartwatches is behind it, as almost all of its OEM partners (aside from Samsung) have given up. Still, I hope that Google provides a similar amount of support for the Pixel Watch as it does with its Pixel phones, for whatever thats worth.

Regardless of the product, be it hardware or software, this years announcements at I/O present an opportunity for Google to start again. Thats the best and worst thing about Googles strategy: it cant stop starting over. Despite some ever-present fixtures in its strategy, like Android, its search business, and Google Assistant, theres little to no logical throughline with its hardware and software. Its often exciting to see what the company does next, but Ive learned to doubt Googles ability to care about its latest products for six months (or even six weeks) after launch. I want to be proven wrong.

At I/O, well see the new products take the stage over. But Im eager as ever to see if Google recognizes that the initial impact of these gadgets matters less than the long-term support.

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Google I/O 2022: Google needs to invest more in support than surprises - The Verge

The parent company of dating apps Tinder, Match and OkCupid is suing Google, alleging that the company exerts too much control over payments through its Google Play app marketplace.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Californias Northern District, accuses the company of deploying anticompetitive tactics to maintain a monopoly on the Android mobile ecosystem:

Ten years ago, Match Group was Googles partner. We are now its hostage. Google lured app developers to its platform with assurances that we could offer users a choice over how to pay for the services they want.

But once it monopolized the market for Android app distribution with Google Play by riding the coattails of the most popular app developers, Google sought to ban alternative in-app payment processing services so it could take a cut of nearly every in-app transaction on Android.

Matchs lawsuit is the latest instance of app developers demanding relief from Google and Apple over the 30 percent standard cut now, sometimes 15% that those tech giants extract from in-app payments. Longstanding tensions around the issue boiled over in 2020 when Epic Games sued Apple for antitrust violations, a case that didnt result in a clear-cut victor but did force Apple to allow developers to point their users to alternative payment options.

Facing pressure over its restrictive payment choices, Google recently launched a pilot program that would allow apps to offer an alternative payment option along with Google Plays own system within apps. Spotify was the only company named as a participant in the pilot program, and Match claims that the company has rebuffed its own efforts to sign up.

At the same time, Google announced plans to crack down on apps that circumvent its billing systems, setting a deadline of June 1. In light of the deadline, Match Group CEO Shar Dubey called the lawsuit a measure of last resort for the dating app company.

They control app distribution on Android devices, and pretend that developers could successfully reach consumers on Android elsewhere, Dubey said. Its like saying you dont have to take the elevator to get to the 60th floor of a building, you can always scale the outside wall. Its not legitimate.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Google dismissed the new Match lawsuit as a self-interested campaign to avoid paying its fair share. Even if they dont want to comply with Google Plays policies, Androids openness still provides them multiple ways of distributing their apps to Android users, including through other Android app stores, directly to users via their website or as consumption-only apps, a Google spokesperson said.

Match Group is a member of the Coalition for App Fairness, a developer advocacy group that calls attention to the ways that Apple and Googles dominance over the mobile software market negatively affects app developers. Epic Games, Spotify and Tile are others prominent members of the group, which was formed in 2020 around the time that Epic escalated its own complaints.

Developers tired of paying such a hefty cut of their in-app earnings to Apple and Google are stepping up the pressure on those companies, but governments around the world are increasingly taking an interest in the issue too.

In the U.S., the bipartisan Open Markets Act would crack open both the iOS and Android app store, upending Apple and Googles shared stranglehold on the mobile software world in the process. That bill moved out of a Senate committee earlier this year and appears poised to continue the slow crawl toward becoming law.

Last week, a competition complaint in the Netherlands against Googles Play Store from Match Group prompted a preliminary investigation into the companys potential anticompetitive practices. That countrys Authority for Consumers and Markets is also sparring with Apple over its own app payment processes, and the regulatory group has ordered the company to allow dating apps to offer alternative payment options.

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Match Group sues Google over monopoly power in Android app payments - TechCrunch

In early 2019, Michele Turner sat down for dinner with her colleague Grant Erickson. Joining them at the restaurant in Silicon Valleys Woodside were two of their counterparts from Amazon and two from Apple. Turner and Erickson both worked for Google. The hosts of this dinner party were Tobin Richardson and John Osborne from the Zigbee Alliance. The aim of the evening was simple: fix the smart home.

Turner, the senior director of Google Smart Home Ecosystem, and Erickson, then a software engineer at Google, had agreed to meet with their competitors to find a solution to the major pain points in the smart home: reliability, connectivity, setup, and the multi-platform problem. While this was not the first conversation between the companies, it was a significant step forward in an ongoing effort by the Zigbee Alliance to bring the industry together and address the challenge of interoperability in the smart home.

Grant, who was also president of the Thread Group at the time, had been leading conversations with us internally at Google about how to solve some of the bigger problems in smart home, recalls Turner. We knew we had the foundational technologies to start to address this but that there was a lot to fix. Grant made a proposal. The Apple folks and the Amazon folks obviously had viewpoints as well. But we all could see the bigger picture of what needed to happen.

Turner recalls they left the meeting with a draft proposal agreed on by all parties and with a commitment to take it further. Initially known internally as Project Unity, it went public just prior to CES 2020 as Project Chip (Connected Home over IP). Shortly after that along with a rebrand of the Zigbee Alliance to the Connectivity Standards Alliance the fruits of that Woodside dinner became Matter: the new interoperability smart home standard, and an unprecedented industry coalition.

The Verge sat down with Turner ahead of Google I/O this week to hear how the company plans to implement Matter when it finally arrives later this year and what it will mean for users of Googles Nest products and the Google Home app.

Google has confirmed that all of its existing Nest branded smart speakers and displays will be upgraded with an over-the-air firmware update to support Matter, allowing you to use Googles voice assistant to control any Matter-enabled device in your home, no matter who made it. It will also update its Google Home speaker and has said that the Nest Wi-Fi, Nest Hub Max, and Nest Hub (2nd Gen) will serve as Thread border routers. Thread is a low-power mesh networking protocol that allows devices to talk to each other locally without a hub, using border routers to route the packets of information around your house. Along with Wi-Fi, Thread is a key component of Matter.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Matter has evolved substantially from that first meeting, and there have been delays and setbacks. Do you still feel confident in that original vision, that its being carried through and is on track to achieve what you set out to do at that Woodside dinner three years ago?

Michele Turner: I do. And, in fact, I think its exceeding our original vision in some ways. Its been incredibly heartening to see the enthusiasm and the adoption and the number of companies that have joined the CSA and the Matter workgroup. Were at 200 companies its amazing.

I think the CSA made the right call [on the latest delay]. We need to make sure that were going to have very high-quality devices in peoples homes. It has to work right. This is super complex. Partners have to make sure that the multi-admin is working accurately [a key feature of Matter that allows devices to work with any platform simultaneously], that theyre not only working with just the Google Nest controller devices but with the Amazon controller devices, the Apple controller devices, the Samsung controller devices. The complexity of this is very high.

How is Matter going to change the smart home experience for the Google Home user?

For the Google Home user, I think the bigger areas of Matter where theyll see change first is in getting your devices set up. I just set up some lights at my mother-in-laws house, and it still took me 45 minutes to set up four lights. It shouldnt have been so hard. The first thing is going to be that significantly simpler setup.

The second piece is the speed and the reliability of the local network. This has been a big pain point for users. My team spent a lot of time working with partners on improving reliability and reducing latency. Because in our mind, if its not as fast as a light switch, whats the point? We believe Matters going to drive down those latency numbers significantly and improve the overall reliability of devices in the home.

Then, I think interoperability for users is going to be a big piece. As much as we love having everybody using the Google Assistant, the reality is people have iPhones and Android phones in their homes. Some of them want to use HomeKit. We just dont have that kind of compatibility today for users. And I think thats hard. Being able to have multi-admin really work well between these ecosystems is going to be a big benefit for users.

Then, our long-term goal is to build out what we call the proactive home. Instead of having a whole bunch of connected devices, how do we build that truly proactive home that works for the benefit of users? ... Matter is going to be absolutely foundational to that. Its the architecture behind the proactive home. If we dont have a home thats reliable, if we dont have things running locally, if it doesnt work consistently, we cannot deliver on that promise.

The proactive home is really that intelligence layer, whether its being able to predict that Im going upstairs, its 10 at night, and I always go into my bedroom at that time, so turn on the lights for me; or, Im watching TV, its 9:30PM, the kids are in bed, and I get a notification on my phone that the lights just went on in the kids bedroom. Is somebody sick? Are they watching YouTube? Being able to do anomaly detection. Now, Matter doesnt do that. But its foundational to be able to enable the rest of that. Because if that core foundation of the home of the smart home isnt solid, the rest of it just doesnt work.

Have you got features like that lined up ready to go? Can we expect to see a significant shift in the way we use our Google smart homes from Day One? Or is this going to be more of a slow build?

Its going to be more of a build. We have to get those intelligence signals coming in, then we have to actually apply machine learning to them. We have to get enough of them coming in that we can build machine learning models around, build algorithms around, to start doing those predictive models.

We have some of that data off of the cloud today. Weve been using it in the Home and Away routine. But that we drive off of the geofence signals and the PIR sensor thats in the thermostat. Its taken us years to get that right. And we have a lot of data coming in from those sources. Now were going to have Matter sensors as a first-party device. Sensors are critical to being able to understand and drive this sort of predictive intelligence in the home. But its going to take time to bring in the signals and build those models. They have to work accurately. You dont want your lights to turn on at 2AM because some signal went haywire.

You mention that sensors are key to the smart home. Is Google exploring other ways of sensing beyond little white plastic boxes? At the Google Smart Home Developers Summit last year, you discussed technologies like ultra wideband for fine location tracking that could be potentially implemented in the smart home. Is that something thats tied to Matter? Or is that something more specific to technologies youre developing within your own ecosystem?

Its not directly tied to Matter. Were working with third-party partners that are using UWB today to try to build some of those more frictionless experiences in the home. But right now, in terms of the smart home area of Google, were mostly working with some of our third-party partners in the home security area around how to use UWB signals for things like frictionless entry [a security system turning off automatically when you walk in]. Thats a thing thats coming.

How are Google Nest devices going to work with Thread and Matter? Its been announced which will be upgraded to Matter and which will be border routers. Can you tell us a little bit about how thats going to work in the Google smart home powered by Matter?

Our Nest Hub Max and our Nest Hub (2nd Gen) will be able to act as Thread border routers, and were actively looking at other devices that may need Thread because Thread has been a part of our strategy for a long time. Now we are looking at the topology of the home. We understand what the mix of devices generally are in homes, and we want to expand that Thread footprint with our partners, like Nanoleaf and others. We have a lot of conversations around whats the best way to start getting more Thread border routers into the home so that we will be able to have that truly fast network. Theres only so many that Googles going to have.

Weve committed to our new Nest Thermostat being on Matter, and we are still evaluating if the learning thermostat can handle Matter. It does have Thread. But just because it has Thread doesnt mean we can run Matter on it.

So, when the Nest Thermostat(s) is upgraded to Matter, youll be able to control it from an Apple HomeKit controller (such as a HomePod or Apples Home app) with Matter?

Yes, that is the multi-admin feature. If I want to have both HomeKit and Google Home running in the house, my HomeKit controller my HomePod or my Apple TV should be able to control my thermostat.

However, a Matter controller cant control another Matter controller [so a Nest Hub cant control a HomePod Mini]. Theres a real difference here between controller devices and end devices. The controller devices act differently.

Will manufacturers still have to certify their devices for each separate platform, as well as Matter certification and Thread (where applicable)? And if they dont get the Google certification, will they still be controllable by Google Assistant or a Google Nest smart speaker or display?

If they choose to use our APIs, we will certify them to make sure they did their API implementation accurately. That will give them access to the Works with Google Home badge. But yes, they can do, say, a generic light bulb certification with Matter, get their light bulb working with Matter, and not use our APIs at all. Then, as long as the user has a compatible Google Nest hub in the home, they can use the Google Home app to set up the device as well as the Nest Hub to control the device.

As youve said, Matter is complicated. And theres a lot of expectation thats been placed on its shoulders. What would you say is the biggest misconception right now with Matter?

I think the biggest misconception is that Matter is going to solve every problem in IoT. It doesnt have a native intelligence layer thats going to automatically give you the proactive home. In my mind, its solving three very foundational things. Its solving making setup easier for the majority of the devices that people put in their homes. Not the majority of device types, necessarily, but the majority of devices people put in their homes.

Its making the IoT more reliable and faster. And then its going to solve this multi-admin problem. Its going to provide that device interconnectivity that we dont have today that is really great for users. While its going to be a lot more than that, its not today. But its solving what we believe are really the core problems that have challenged adoption by mainstream users in the past.

Its clear that connectivity is the main issue here thats being solved. But when everything works with everything, the platforms are going to need to differentiate themselves to attract the user. Why will people want to use Google Home in the future when Matter arrives, as opposed to any of the other platforms?

One of the things that Matter does is level the playing field for these device makers. Now theyre all getting a little bit commodified. And theyre worried about that. The CSA says there are 130 devices on track to launch with Matter. But there are tens of thousands of devices out there. Theres a long way to go.

Some of the developers are a little bit wait and see because theyre worried about getting commoditized in the market. What Google is going to be offering to these developers and I talked about this in the Smart Home Developer Summit, well have more on it coming up at I/O is the ability to work with us to build automations on our platform, which will enable them to differentiate.

Were not the experts in lighting; were not the experts in home cleaning; were not the experts in leak detection. Thats what our partners do. We want to build the best platform on top of Android, for them to be able to differentiate and build these new experiences that will create new offerings for users. I think thats the value.

Google is going to have some key offerings along the lines of intelligence in context that developers are going to be able to take advantage of to build these compelling and next-generation solutions on their platform.

Originally posted here:

Google explains why it's all in on Matter, the first true smart home standard - The Verge

Last fall, Google announced a key improvement to devices running its Google TV front end with personalized access so that each user in a home could have individual profiles with their own recommendations and Assistant responses. In December, that feature was delayed until the coming months, and its still nowhere to be found; however, 9to5Google reports glanceable cards for Google TVs ambient mode screen saver that were also announced at the same time are starting to roll out.

When they were announced in October, Google showed a version of the UI (the picture above) with large personalized cards scrolling across the middle of the screen. They could display information like weather, sports scores, and news or toss in shortcuts to content you might like, including podcast episodes, music, and photos.

On the devices where its showing up so far, however, 9to5Google mentions that it actually looks a bit different, with smaller information chips lined up across the bottom of the display with stuff like YouTube video shortcuts, a podcast in Google Podcasts, or a prompt for Google Assistant. If its enabled on your device, they mention that an indication should be a menu prompt telling you proactive personal results are now on so that you can go to the Assistant settings and turn them off if you dont want them on your TV screen.

As with most things Google, the exact timing of the rollout is unknown, but with Google I/O kicking off tomorrow, maybe well hear more about its smart TV features then.

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Google TV's ambient mode screen saver with sports scores and podcast links is rolling out - The Verge

What if you never had to type in a password again? Imagine. An international day of celebration. Children dancing in the streets. Soldiers laying down their arms and hugging tearfully across the battlefield.

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Or, at least, a mild improvement in your daily life. Thats what Apple, Google and Microsoft are offering, with a fairly rare triple announcement that the three tech giants are all adopting the Fido standard and ushering in a passwordless future. The standard replaces usernames and passwords with passkeys, log-in information stored directly on your device and only uploaded to the website when matched with biometric authentication like a selfie or fingerprint. From Apples announcement:

Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.

The three companies will roll out Fido support over the course of the coming year. The Fido2 standard is actually already public, and some companies support it already, largely for internal authentication. But the standard has long lacked the final step necessary for ubiquity: making it easy to get started.

Thats what this latest announcement is about. With the help of the platform owners, users will be able to sync their Fido passkeys, without needing to log in fresh on each new device. That takes it from a service that is nice addition to passwords, to one that can be fully used to replace them.

Ease of use is only part of the reason for the switch. Passkeys, secured with biometric identification on your phone, are faster than manually entering passwords, but if you use a password manager (and you should use a password manager) youll be able to enter passwords and login to most websites at the tap of a (fingerprint sensing) button anyway.

But the bigger reason is that passwords suck. They suck because of how they are used in practice: people make short, easy-to-guess passwords, and then re-use them across the internet. For many users, the more important a website is, the more likely the password is to be short and easy-to-guess, because while you may tolerate entering a long, secure password once or twice, you wont bother doing it several times a day.

And the ways weve tried to fix passwords also suck. Requirements to add complexity to passwords, in an attempt to make it harder to break them by brute force, are notoriously infuriating, and frequently inept at securing the actual outcome theyre seeking: if P@ssword1 is a valid password but doubloon prorogue tunnel (to offer a passphrase randomly generated by my password manager just now) isnt, youve just reduced the security of someones account.

Two-factor authentication, which asks you to link a second factor to your account such as a phone number which gets texted, or another device, which you use to approve the login has its own problems. The most popular forms of two-factor authentication all involve the use of one-time passcodes, either texted to you or generated by an app on your phone or computer. And those one-time passcodes are just as open to phishing as a conventional password, albeit with a shorter expiration date if theyre successfully stolen.

And so, if the Fido thing takes off, the world should get slightly more secure, slightly less frustrating and slightly smoother to move through.

What will it look like for you? Probably not that different in practice. One day, youll be making an account on a website and just wont be asked for a password. You might not even notice it happens. But rest assured: the children will be dancing in the streets anyway.

If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Wednesday.

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TechScape: Apple, Google and Microsoft are about to make passwords a thing of the past - The Guardian

Google will allow ads for stem cell treatments that are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration a change from its previous policy, which banned all ads for this experimental category of medical care. The policy update was first reported by Gizmodo and will go into effect in July.

The company said in the policy update that it will also allow cell or gene therapy ads that are exclusively educational or informational in nature, even if they reference products or applications that are not approved by the FDA. Its not clear how Google would define educational or informational or what type of advertisements would be allowed under that umbrella.

Stem cell therapy is a broad term for medical treatments that use stem cells, which can develop into any cell type. There are some evidence-based applications for the cells, like to treat some cancers, and there are around two dozen FDA-approved cell- and gene-therapy products (which Googles new policy would allow ads for).

But most uses for stem cells are unproven, experimental, and can be dangerous. Clinics claim the cells, taken from donated umbilical cords or from patients fat, can treat things like joint pain or eye conditions. People have developed infections and died after getting those types of procedures. The FDA has tried to crack down on businesses offering these types of procedures, but theyve proliferated over the past few years.

Googles initial ban on stem cell ads hasnt done much to keep the clinics from popping up in search, Paul Knoepfler, a professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, wrote in Stat in March. Even if they cant advertise, the companies have designed websites that appear at the top of search results for searches related to stem cells above more reputable medical resources, like the National Institutes of Health.

These companies are savvy and have been able to skirt policies to push out their products even in the face of a total ban. Now, that ban is set to relax, opening up new avenues for groups to distribute information. Googles continuing stem cell problem is emblematic of a serious, broader problem with unproven biomedical offerings the company needs to address, Knoepfler wrote.

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Google relaxes ban on stem cell therapy ads - The Verge

Ken Colburn| Special for The Republic

QUESTION: I love Google Chrome, but it seems like its bogging down a lot lately. Any suggestions?

ANSWER: No matter which browser youre using, over time things can bog down especially if you like to have lots of websites open at the same time.

There was a time when you could only have one active session running in a browser and the use of the Back button was how you switched to something that you previously opened.

That all changed with the adoption of tabbed browsing back in the early 2000s, which allowed for additional web pages without closing the current one.

This incredibly useful feature has led to what many are calling a tab hoarding problem that can lead to numerous issues, including sluggish browser performance.

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Each browser session you open via a new tab takes additional working memory (RAM) which taken to the extreme can deplete this precious resource for everything on your computer.

Many web pages have active sections of video as content or as an advertisement, which can lead to an even greater amount of memory being sucked up for something you arent currently viewing.

If you see a lot of tabs open when things get slow, try closing as many as possible to see if thats contributing to the slowdown.

This is why you have so many browser tabs open

Whether on our personal or work computer, we all may be guilty of this one bad habit. Having way too many browser tabs open at once, to the point that it can become overwhelming. Susana Victoria Perez has more.

Buzz60

Chrome has a Task Manager tool that will allow you to see how much memory each open tab is using and close them if they are memory hogs.

You can open the Task Manager by using the keyboard shortcut of Shift+Esc or click on the three dots in the upper right corner of Chrome, then on More tools, then on Task Manager.

To see the tabs that are using the most memory, click on the Memory footprint heading until you see a black down arrow, which indicates memory usage in descending order.

Look for anything that starts with Tab: to start your evaluation of the memory hogs so youll know which ones to avoid keeping open in the background.

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Google includes a basic tool for removing harmful or rogue software that may have snuck into your browser.

To open the tool, click on the three dots in the upper right corner of your browser window, then on Settings and then on the Advanced tab.

Look for the Reset and clean up option to get to the Clean up computer function.

A great reason for choosing Chrome as your browser is the plethora of add-on tools better known as extensions that can dramatically improve functionality.

But, just as with tabs, too many can add unnecessary overhead to Chrome that can contribute to slower performance issues.

Extensions are often like smartphone apps that seem to be something youll use often but turn out to only get used when you first install them.

Look for an icon that looks like a puzzle piece in the upper right corner of Chrome to access the Manage extensions option which will allow you to disable or remove the ones that you dont use regularly.

If these tips didnt help, try alternative browsers such as Firefox, Opera, Brave, Safari (macOS) or Edge (Windows).

Ken Colburn is founder and CEO of Data Doctors Computer Services, datadoctors.com. Ask any tech question at facebook.com/DataDoctors or on Twitter @TheDataDoc.

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Google Chrome bogging down? Try these tips to speed it up - The Arizona Republic