
Google I/O 2016 Live Keynote - jonathansizz
https://events.google.com/io2016/?
======
barnacs
This is just sad. Yet another messaging app. This time with ads built right
into your private conversations. And the crowd cheers :(

~~~
CameronBanga
They just released a new chat app TWO DAYS AGO.

Which do I use, even if I am a Google fan and love all things Google?

~~~
ubertaco
Wait, they did?

~~~
nostromo
Yes, Google Spaces:

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/introducing-
spaces-t...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/introducing-spaces-tool-
for-small-group.html)

It's roughly analogous to Facebook Groups.

------
lanestp
Google knows that this is a developer conference right? I feel like I'm at
CES. I don't care about any of their apps unless there is some really cool
integrations I can do. Talk API's or this is just noise.

~~~
cryptoz
Currently listening to details about full disk encryption, when/how shaders
are compiled for graphics improvements, SELinux improvements, etc. Seems like
a developer conference for sure!

~~~
lanestp
I know! Finally! Of course I can't help but see that the message Google took
away from Stagefright was that they needed to harden their media frameworks
rather than needing OS level security updates for all devices.

------
Rezo
Next step in Allo: just automatically pick the best "smart reply" for me, add
"smart questions" and we can leave both sides of the conversation to the bots.
"Have your AI assistant contact my AI assistant to work out the details" :)

~~~
mirekrusin
...that's funny, then you look at the transcript and see some jokes about
humans and switching to binary protocol.

------
Analemma_
[Google announces Home, an Echo competitor]

This seems cool. Echo is pretty neat but this space could use some
competition.

["available later this year"]

Ah, so it's doomed. Those four words are a death sentence, particularly from
Google's hardware department.

~~~
danieldk
I don't understand why anyone would want to have such a device in their home.
How long before they start data mining conversations for better ad targeting?
What if a state actor gets access to such devices?

Is no one worried at all?

~~~
cwyers
I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no,
I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing
better ad targeting.

~~~
joeld42
That might be more the fault of the advertisers than Amazon. Amazon knows what
books you will like with a high degree of certainty, but they don't always
have ads available that are a close match, and some advertisers set their
targeting very broadly because they don't care (they want a wide reach, e.g.
for rank boosting) or don't know better.

~~~
cwyers
You're probably not too far off (although nowhere else in Amazon's ecosystem
have I seen very good recommendations, and most of their advertising elsewhere
seems to be just showing me stuff I browsed on Amazon earlier and didn't buy),
but if the ad inventory isn't there to really incentivize that sort of
targeting, that's the same thing, isn't it?

------
robsun
Just noticed. They all wear Android smartwatches...

I don't know single person in Europe who uses his Android smartwatch after
couple of months!

~~~
schwuk
Anecdotal, but I've worn my LG Urbane every day since I got it last September.
Very happy with it.

~~~
robsun
Happy to hear that. I sold my Moto 360 after ~year.

I used it every day and until a software update broke it (it run into infinite
loop of crashing Play services). I sent it to warranty and Motorola
reinstalled the OS but in meantime I used my old, classic watch. It turned out
I didn't miss 360. Other people I know have similar stories.

Hopefully the platform is still alive. Does anyone develop apps for Android
Watch? AFAIR there is no special category in Google Play for this.

------
sergiotapia
Kind of cringey, feels like I'm watching a Sillicon Valley scene.

Machine learning to one-hit reply "Cute dog"? Billions of dollars and these
features seem pretty boring.

~~~
tdkl
It's a classic Google delusion - they produce keynote demos, not products.

This Allo app doesn't solve the problem of people (that actually means all
people you talk to) having to opt into it.

~~~
Touche
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11699122/google-allo-
messa...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/18/11699122/google-allo-messaging-
app-announced-io-2016)

> "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay

Yeah, developers hate maintenance and improving existing products, but for
users having 12 chat apps is really annoying.

~~~
Jtsummers
From your article:

    
    
      In the example Google showed us, a graduation photo came
      through. The suggested replies were along the lines of
      "Congratulations!" and "You look great!" Think for a moment about
      what it takes to do that. Google recognized it was a graduation
      photo and then went a step beyond just guessing what it was, it
      guessed at appropriate responses.
    

Umm. Its suggestions are no better than a simple like. It's less than greeting
card sentiment. And it removes the need to even _know_ what you're looking at.
I'm not sure that's really a positive thing. Thread full of messages
responding to pictures that the users never looked at. It's bad enough that
for many people birthday and anniversary and holiday well-wishes are a simple
"Happy Holidays" on someone's FB timeline or a text. Do we really need to
automate sending those so that the sentiment is delivered but never actually
shared?

Dystopian future headline from December 25th, 2040: Millions of zombie "Happy
Holiday" texts, Google to use death certificate database to fight zombies.

------
Zikes
Yet another messaging app: Allo.

Goodbye Google Talk, Hangouts, Google Voice, and Messenger. This time, they're
getting it right!

~~~
CameronBanga
You forgot Spaces, which they announced two days ago.

~~~
josteink
Maybe Google did too?

------
robsun
In my humble opinion Google isn't solving new problems anymore. They created
great company thanks to solving very important problem: people couldn't find
right things on the Internet.

Now it is all about ads and reducing number of taps required to order a pizza.
The keynote is just boring.

~~~
wstrange
Yea - I hear ya. Self driving cars, conversational AIs, VR hardware - same old
same old.

~~~
tdkl
> conversational AIs

Because I always wanted a chat app that I could talk to AI with, not my actual
real life friends, as they're too busy not giving a fuck at another $chatapp
from Google and are still mad at me at the last two I was trying to make them
use.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Nah, I would very much appreciate an AI I could talk to. But none is on the
horizon yet - I'm still waiting until one will be able to hold the
conversation and have something interesting/relevant to say.

------
rdtsc
Duo -- video calling, competitor to Skype? A "knock-knock" feature -- you see
a preview of the caller before picking. Uses quic protocol, built by webrtc
team, claims seamless transition when connections switch from wifi to
cellular. Graceful degradation if network quality goes down.

Allo -- video chat, e2e encryption and expiring messages. That looks good but
unless someone else audits, I'll be suspicious.

Android N -- Vulkan for games, that looks promising. New jit compiler, 75%
faster app install speed, 50% reduction in size. File-based encryption.
Seamless updates -- phone downloads system image in background. Then on next
boot it switches to new image. Also split screen to see multiple windows at
the same time. Those are some nice new features.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _New jit compiler, 75% faster app install speed, 50% reduction in speed._

Wait, you mean they made apps install 75% faster but otherwise run 50% slower?
That doesn't make much sense...

~~~
rdtsc
I meant to write size. Thanks for catching it!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Ah, it makes much more sense now. Great! :).

------
sidcool
Google Photos update: 200 million monthly active users. 1 trillion labels
assigned.

------
sandGorgon
The coolest part of the whole keynote (till now) has been developer tools.

Android Studio 2.2 . Improvements to the compilers, many X improvements to
instant run, automatic test generation, C++ debugging and constrained layout
editors.

firebase - very cool.

This is huge...

------
outside1234
"Android Instant Apps" -> aka web hijacker

~~~
callahad
I really wonder how this pairs with Google's push for Progressive Web Apps.
The two seem to be in direct opposition.

~~~
dragonwriter
I see them aligned in terms of what they are trying to achieve UX-wise, one
serves the community that is already building web apps, one serves the
community that's already building mobile apps, both get you low-friction,
native (or native-like) UX.

~~~
callahad
I must be missing something; all of this feels very uncoordinated.

The primary entry point into Android Instant Apps are normal URLs which get
shared over Email, SMS, or Instant Messaging, but for those URLs to ever get
shared, they must already exist and work on the current web. So you still have
to put in the effort of building a full Web experience.

...and Android can automatically enhance progressive web apps to provide
experiences that are capable of being indistinguishable from native. Plus, it
will work just fine everywhere else. Because it's the Web.

And you pretty much have to get close to that point anyway, since Instant Apps
are useless without preexisting, functioning links for the app to hijack...
why would you then duplicate the effort to have a version written in Java?
Access to payment APIs is compelling for the B&H demo, but for Buzzfeed?

...and wouldn't you already be doing your damnedest to provide a similar
experience for iOS or desktop users, on the Web itself?

~~~
dragonwriter
Developers differ on preference for whether they want to do "desktop web +
mobile app" or "web for all platforms".

Google, rather than taking a firm stand on which is "right", is providing
tools so that developers can take either approach. Google, in this area, is
more opinionated on the kind of UX that should be achieved than the route.

Now, you make some good arguments for why Progressive Web Apps might be the
better route.

------
sidcool
Google announces Google assistant. A conversational assistant similar to what
Facebook Messenger is trying to do.

~~~
phreeza
Was that really an announcement or more of a demo of what they are aiming for?
I missed the beginning.

~~~
sidcool
There was a nice demo, similar to Facebook Messenger bots.

------
kuzmin
Such a great moment when they open the "Buzzfeed instant app" and half the
screen is covered by an ad..

------
dep_b
Constraint layouts with a visual editor. While a significant part of the iOS
developer community doesn't like to work that way apparently there's not
better solution out there?

------
sidcool
And end to end encrypted one to one video calling chat.

------
amaks
Vulkan in Android N is huge

~~~
jblow
Except not really because Vulkan is apparently not very good.

~~~
Guzba
Aw, it isn't? I respect your opinion a lot so I would like to know more about
this.

------
jon-wood
I've not watched the keynote yet but I'm hopeful the announcement of Home will
also come with opening up of Google Now's voice search similar to Alexa. I
really want to like Google Now but it's just so limited at the moment - let me
control Spotify, Hue bulbs, and my TV with it please!

~~~
jon-wood
Oh, and let me address it with something other than "OK, Google". Let me name
it, or set the trigger phrase, or do an interpretive dance. Anything but that
awful phrase.

~~~
chatmasta
I might be totally wrong about this, but I think the reason "OK Google" or
"Hey Alexa" are immutable phrases is because the listening for them is
implemented via an ASIC chip at the hardware level, in order to save on
battery life. That is, instead of a software based `while(listening) {...}`,
an actual hardware component looks for the correct wave forms from the
microphone output.

~~~
yaantc
I looked into this recently. Voice triggering is typically done on DSP and the
digital processing power is typically already small compared to the microphone
(which is not much itself). For power optimized applications the DSP
implementation is power optimized (low speed, low leakage) and processing is
done in two steps: a coarse, basic recognition with some false alarm
probability, with an accurate second step. For a plugged device there's no
need to super optimize, the DSP part should be in the single digit mW. A fixed
trigger makes the system simpler however: no configuration to manage, no risk
of having the kids randomly changing the trigger for something funny, etc.

------
St-Clock
The best way to follow this keynote is through @pinboard twitter account [1].
It distorts the disruption.

[1] [https://twitter.com/pinboard](https://twitter.com/pinboard)

------
diegoloop
Android Security:

What happened to Google? I remember back in the days when Apple said that they
will reviewed all the apps before they appear on the App Stores. Now it looks
reviewing apps before release is not cool anymore.

~~~
mcintyre1994
I don't think Google ever manually reviewed, they've been adding more
automated checks for a while though. And I think Apple still manually review.

~~~
mavhc
They have been for over a year apparently

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/app-submissions-on-
google-p...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/app-submissions-on-google-play-
now-reviewed-by-staff-will-include-age-based-ratings/)

------
hobarrera
"I/O Live will resume soon"

It's been like that for a few hours now.

------
sidcool
New Communication apps: New Messaging app Allo. It can add emojis, whisper or
shout and has smart replies like Inbox. It can also reply to images. And has
the Google smart assistant.

~~~
sschueller
This is so DOA, bots can do most if this already in existing messaging app.
Not putting this in hangout is a death blow. I'm not installing another chat
app.

~~~
mathgeek
> Not putting this in hangout is a death blow. I'm not installing another chat
> app.

This is a big one for me. Unless I can have my A/V calls and SMS messages in
the same app as other chat, I'm not going to use it.

~~~
rspeer
Sounds like you're lucky enough to have a carrier where MMS still works in
Hangouts, or you never get MMS messages.

~~~
mathgeek
I'm on Project Fi, so it would definitely be pretty awkward if Hangouts didn't
get my MMS messages.

------
drdoom
Oh, no, Google Deflate has started...

I watched the Goggle I/O event for 10 minutes. First, they talked about how
they copied Siri.

And now they are talking about how they copied Amazon Echo.

Unlimited resources. Wasted...

~~~
sidcool
And what do you think they should do?

~~~
ZenoArrow
Can you really not think of anything better? Let's put it like this, if you
had billions of dollars to create something new, what would you want to
create?

~~~
drdoom
New emojis !!! :-)

I am looking forward to when they release the version where they are generated
on the spot with their new GPU improvements.

------
vonklaus
Is there a full recording after this concludes? I want to watch(or scan) the
i/o event stream, but I don't have time to do it now.

------
sidcool
I find it scary there was absolutely no mention or even a hint of Google+ and
Hangouts. They sure seem to be on their way out.

------
hackaflocka
Did they announce anything re: Android for the desktop? Anyone know what's
going on with Android+Chrome integration?

------
isseu
Google concern about anonymity, cool

------
sidcool
Android 2.2 is out with sweet sweet features. Dying to get my hands on it.

------
soared
Coincidentally just noticed firebase integrates with adwords as of today.

------
sidcool
Google launches Amazon Echo competitor, google home.

------
chippy
I really miss IRC back channels at conferences.

------
Roritharr
Will Magic Leap get its own conference?

------
what_a_disaster
They are introducing another video app, duo? Why not integrate that into the
original messaging app.

------
what_a_disaster
You can tell by the name that Allo is going to be a disaster.

~~~
retox
(older) Brits will be reminded of the series Allo Allo, set during the
occupation of France.

Maybe there's room for a disposable message feature called 'I will say this
only once...'

~~~
insulanian
Shhh... It is I, Leclerc.

~~~
l33tfr4gg3r
Go piddle your massages elsewhere!

------
what_a_disaster
Why would I use this over FaceTime and iMessage?

~~~
unlinker
Because you and your friends don't need to own an iPhone to use it.

