Google’s week of launches gave I/O a run for its money

Abner Li | Dec 8 2023 - 2:30 pm PT

The number of announcements that Google made in the past week or so truly felt like I/O. Gemini 1.0 was, of course, the highlight and most consequential for Google.

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This foundational model will power many features and products going forward. The announcement could have used a bit more fanfare than just the virtual parade of blog posts, videos, and interviews to better reflect the magnitude. After all, it’s hard to make an online announcement feel different in the modern era.

That said, the launch was more than redeemed by Google immediately rolling out Gemini after detailing it. There was Bard with Gemini Pro and Gemini Nano on the Pixel 8 Pro. The momentum continued on Friday, with NotebookLM dropping its waitlist. Besides getting updated to use Gemini Pro, the UI, which was quite barebones in July, looks quite polished. It will be very interesting to see whether it ends up becoming its own product or gets integrated into something in the Workspace portfolio.

Speaking of the Pixel, Android 14 QPR1 with the December Feature Drop brought a slew of features, though the biggest additions across AI and the camera were reserved for the flagship model. However, everyone can benefit from the webcam support, contextual replies in Call Screen, Direct My Call + Hold for Me for non-toll-free numbers, and weather in Google Clock.

Rounding things out on the hardware front is Google Home finally adding custom clips and support for the first-gen Nest Cam Outdoor, as well as AI-powered garage door detection. The Home app on Wear OS is also picking up a number of updates.

An even more consequential release — in terms of active users — came the week before with Google Messages. Besides the new app name, the slew of new expressive features were received quite well. The launch to beta, with an explicit encouragement to join the program, was quite unexpected. Meanwhile, the compose field redesign went unannounced, and people certainly have feelings about it.

Continuing on the messaging front, many of the Google Chat changes announced a few months ago also rolled out in the past week, from the new icon to a wild bottom bar.

Save for the AI-related announcements, the explanation for these features coming in quick succession is the push to launch before the holidays.

Whatever the reason, this flurry is exciting from an end user/consumer perspective and approaches an I/O-level of news. More functionality was actually available for people to use in the past few days, and that sure beats previews of what’s coming next.

The past week of Google firing at all cylinders made the company feel much more cohesive — and less sprawling — than usual.