Many people are writing about what Google *will* discuss at tomorrow’s Google I/O conference, but unless they have clairvoyance, leaking, or guessing based on the schedule, it’s difficult to be definitive. I will be attending tomorrow and wanted to discuss what I think Google *should*discuss during the event.
Artificial intelligence.: Last year, Google rolled out the TPU, a machine learning inference accelerator, and they also showed how the company used machine learning-based AI in Google assistant, bots, Google Home web and Android experiences.
Google should talk about updates on all those fronts. Bots so far have been a market and user failure and think like Facebook and Microsoft did in their conferences (F8 and BUILD which I attended), Google should talk how they see bots working in the future. I think we should here more examples of how AI is everywhere in all the Google experiences of Chrome, Android, G Suite and possibly Pixel. Google, like Facebook and Microsoft will go out of their way to show how much farther ahead than anyone in AI with frameworks, applications and hardware. They will talk about the thousands of ways they are using AI and reinforce that Tensorflow, created and then open-sourced by Google, is the #1 distribution on GitHub.
Cloud: Google made most of their enterprise cloud announcements at Google Next 17, so I think on volume, we shouldn’t hear as much about the cloud as last year. I do think we should see some fancy updates on cloud/web apps like Photos, Music, Mail, Search, Maps, Music, YouTube, etc., likely leveraging AI above.
Regarding AR, Microsoft has sucked a lot of wind out of the Google ecosystem with a successful HoloLens and Windows Holographic OS, even though Google was first with Glass. Google should to trot out much better headsets and tools. Who knows, maybe it’s time to trot out Google Glass 3? Google Glass 1 is the consumer-focused device sitting in one of my boxes in my garage, Glass 2 is the less talked about one in developer’s hands right now.
Related to all three (AI, AR/VR, cloud), we very well could see some real details on autonomous cars via Waymo. This pulls together AI, AR and the cloud, so as a show of technical bragging rights, we could very well see details. Companies like NVIDIA and Intel are starting to get more credit than Google for powering autonomous cars, so Google should trot out Waymo details.
Enterprise: Google already had their enterprise show at Next 17, so while Google I/O isn’t enterprise focused, I think Google should reiterate some of the key messages and products they sent at Next 17.
Android apps on Chrome OS: Last year, Google announced Android apps on Chrome. Google must address the “less-than-optimal” experience of Android apps on Chrome OS. I spent months with Samsung’s latest Chromebook Plus and the experience felt slow and confusing.
As for Hangouts Chat for enterprise, only a few customers are able to test it and therefore must not be fully baked. Slack and Cisco Systems Spark is fully released, Microsoft Teams is fully available to all customers, but Hangouts Chat isn’t broadly available or complete. I don’t quite know what the delay is, but it would be nice to be able to test. Google should provide an update on Chat and Jamboard.
Android O: Obviously we should hear more details on Android O. I’d like to hear Google address how it will attack the next billion smartphones, many of which today are flip phones in emerging regions. Ubuntu phone OS dropped out of the race, Microsoft isn’t interested in it, Apple either, so this space should be target-rich for Google.
Privacy: AI is great, but we can’t forget that like Facebook, Google’s primary business is advertising. Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise that everything Google does, with the exception of some of its advanced development projects, is designed to build better personal profiles to increase ad CTR (click-through rate) or create platforms to deliver advertising.
I’d like to see Google discuss how it is clearly disclosing how it is using AI, what it is doing with those very personal details, how it is secured and disposed of and how this consumer data is kept separate from enterprise data.
Wrapping up
After having attended both Microsoft’s and Facebook’s developer events, Google I/O should round out much of the field until Apple’s WWDC event in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to being dazzled and if not that informed. I’ll write about the show here in a few days.