Google had a virtual version of it’s developer-focused I/O event in California this week. These are some of their announcements.
- Smart Canvas: A new project collaboration tool for Google Workspaces that mixed Docs, Sheets, Slides, and in the future Meet.
- Improvements to Google Translate
- New, more powerful Google Cloud pods with exaflop processing power
- New Password tools for Chrome, including an easier way to change compromised passwords
- Better privacy control (because they haven’t heard about irony), including the ability to turn off location history in Maps, and locked folders for Photos.
- Improvements in Search’s AI that allow it to answer questions based on photos.
- AR experiences that allow the user to see how elite athletes perform through their phones
- AR features in Maps that allow a person to get information about a business by awkwardly pointing their camera at it
- Improvements to Street View to make it more natural looking, and better highlighting of signs
- Advertising improvements to Maps that will give businesses more a more prominent presence at given times of the day and a better logic to show how busy an area of town rather than a single business is at a specific time of day
- The ability to get information about products and a link to buy them online from a photo, and a global shopping cart in Chrome that will look for coupons and loyalty programs and alert the user of price drops
- A new forced grouping of pictures in Google Photos that Google feels should go together based on the contents of the image, and animated images created from similar stills
- The ability to delete an ex from showing up in memories
- Android 12’s new looks by what of a design called Material You that allows colors to be adjusted to the user’s wallpaper.
- New privacy features in Android 12 (again, because they haven’t heard of irony)
- Better integration of Android and other Google technologies like Android TV and Android Auto, including the possibility of using the phone as a digital key in select vehicles
- The merging of WearOS and Samsung’s Tizen, and the upcoming merge of Fitbit into WearOS
- If you don’t hate WebMD yet, Google will now act as a dermatologist and identify and diagnose skin conditions from photos
- Project Starline, an attempt at making videos calls look more realistic and closer to in person meetings (which seems pretty useless for individuals, so it may be something that they’re ultimately going to pitch to interviewers).