Google Play
- Presently providing 600,000 applications with over 20 billion downloads to date.
- The content a user owns is cloud-based so that your use experience is coordinated across all the devices you use.
- New Google partnerships with magazines, movies, and content providers.
- Movies for sale can be watched many times with no limit.
- Google cloud is available for free cloud messaging with no quota limits for applications.
- Smart app updates will only download the new modules within an application and not the entire application with every version change.
- Free online classes for developers.
- Competes with Apple App and iTunes store, and with Amazon Prime for Kindle.
Google Search
- New and improved user interface using “cards”, formatting the presentation of search results into layers of cards, integrated with your calendar and location.
- Improved search by voice
- “Google Now” integrates your location with places of interest in proximity. “Now” knows where you are, where you need to be next, when to leave, and how to get there – and it will tell you.
- Improved integration with public transit and your Estimated Time of Arrival to your destination.
- Improved responses for travel, flights, and sports search queries that narrow the response to the context of today, here and now – for example today’s game scores, rather than showing you everything on internet.
- No contest – unless… Microsoft Bing?
Google+ (Google Plus)
- Google Events integrates Google+ circles with Google Calendar, giving you the ability to organize your needs for a special occasion all from within the Google platform.
- Google Hangouts – live group video chat saved to YouTube.
- Party mode – Here is a social collaboration tool that results in a realtime collage of photos and comments from participants in a Google Event. Reminds me of Wave on +.
- Facebook killer? Perhaps, the features such as Hangout and photos are better, if only your friends would go there.
Google Glass
- Google Glass is a pair of eyeglasses that rests on your nose and between your right eye and eyebrow there is a vision field for you to see a virtual reality. It is “ridiculously light, physically and visually, to reduce it to its core essence,” weighing less than most sunglasses.
- It processes images and you convey that information to others… While you wear Google Glass you interacte with it and other with voice dialog, the still camera, the video camera, and other built-in sensor information, such as positioning compass and gyroscope.
- OMG, I’ve listed this down in the trenches of this article, but the Google Glass demo was the coolest ever: On stage in the convention hall, a man asked people in a blimp flying high above San Francisco to deliver him a package. And he told them to hurry! … The blimp held skydivers who wore Google Glasses. We saw via Google Glass what they saw out of the blimp – a beautiful view of San Francisco. “Don’t try this at home,” they noted, adding, “These are trained divers.” Four sky divers, including one woman, jumped out of the blimp!!! We were part of their jump virtually and vicariously via Google Glass. My vertigo kicked in. The sky divers wore this jumpsuit that doubled as a sail, called a wingsuit. Opening their arms and legs like flying squirrels, they air sailed or “wingsuited” to the top of the San Francisco Moscone Convention Center, which was marked with a target yellow arrow. They made it safe and sound, all of them, releasing their parachutes just before they landed to break the fall… Hurray! Everyone was cheering and applauding in the room, in the conference… Next, since the top of Moscone center was too long to walk, three bikers were waiting nearby to take over the next relay segment… The bikers – one plus two backups – pedaled to the edge of the roof. Yes, the bikers wore Google Glasses too, and we lept off the roof, landing on a ramp on the adjacent roof… Everyone was thrilled… The bikers pedaled to the next edge. There was one repeller; yes, he wore Google Glass. The biker transfered the package to him. We now watch as he scales from the rooftop down the wall of the convention center to a 3rd level scaffold or fire escape. Two bikers awaited, wearing Glasses, and they rode like bats out of hell through the exhibition hall and the convention floor to the stage, amidst more cheering, and delivered the package. What was inside the package? A pair of Google Glass. Watch the demo below or on YouTube!
- Google is now accepting developers for the Explorer Edition preorders available to I/O attendees @ $1500, shipping in early 2013.
- Sergey Brin announced this product will ship to consumers in 2014.
Google Maps
- Google announced new Maps features prior to the the Apple WWDC… So most of Wednesday’s talk was to reiterate.
- Overall, there is better integration of Search with Maps and Places for improved awareness of what a location offers, from transit options to Zagat restaurant reviews.
- Google Places adds an API to encourage mobile and location-based apps development.
- Google Transit is now a Maps API.
- Available now for Android, soon for iOS.
- For developers and trusted testers now, there is the ability in the Maps API for: asset tracking, geo-fencing, dynamic arrow symbols and movement of arrow vector. (For example to simulate real time air traffic of planes flying across the country, or to simulate weather fronts, or to provide a workforce the ability for data collection tools).
- Competes with Apple iOS 6 on the iPhone, iPad platform.
These Google features will work best in an integrated user experience in a vertically integrated environment. That is, you can optimize or best appreciate Project Butter-enhanced Play or Search or Maps features, when logged into to your Google Account while running Jelly Bean on Nexus devices. You can only operate Nexus Q from a Nexus or Droid Gingerbread/Ice Cream Sandwich. If you had to choose a permanent virtual residence, which cloud would you choose?
Global warming does exist. May and June have been the hottest months on record in the cloud. Look out for stormy weather and bumpy rides, as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and (hesitantly including) Microsoft compete on multiple fronts to advance their platform. That is, they hope to be ubiquitous in “SoLoMo” – in the social, local, mobile application space; plus entertainment content. Last month was the Facebook IPO, preceded by their Instagram purchase for $1 Billion. Three weeks ago, in early June, Apple held its annual WWDC at the Moscone Center, with its announcement of iOS 6 and alliances with Facebook and Yelp. Prior to WWDC, Google preempted the Apple Maps announcement by announcing its Google Maps upgrade. Then post-WWDC Google slashed its Maps API prices by 98% for some high-volume customers. Last week Microsoft pre-announced its Surface Tablet – albeit without ship dates and pricing – and purchased Yammer for $1.2 Billion. Those were Microsoft’s attempts to upstage Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, and Google’s Chromebooks and the Nexus tablet, as well as respond to Google cloud encroaching on Microsoft’s Office desktop.
I didn’t make it to San Francisco for this week’s soldout Google I/O. Too bad, because in an Oprah moment, Google announced giving every US-based attendee a new Nexus Android phone running Jelly Bean, a Nexus 7 tablet, and a Nexus Q. However, I did the next best thing – watched it streaming live at the Google Washington DC office with about 75 others. This was repeated at Google offices across the world, as part of Google I/O Extended. You too can watch it streaming live from the I/O website or YouTube today and tomorrow.
Which products do you want? How will you integrate your gadgets, with your TV, with your life? Leave a comment.
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