According to a report from Tech Insider today, Google is nearing a deal with Toyota to sell its Boston Dynamics robotics division to the car maker. This follows a report from two months ago suggesting that Alphabet was planning to sell the division known for its super-creepy animal-like and human-like robots due to lack of a ‘marketable product’ in the next few years…
And now Dave Hakkens, the creator of Phonebloks (the project that first inspired Project Ara and other modular phones), has come out with his two cents on the latest Ara update…
Google announced Android Wear 2.0 at I/O 2016, featuring more customizable watch faces, the ability to go without your phone when you are running or want to track a hike, AI-powered Smart Reply, a handwriting recognition mode, and more. But the question remains: which devices are going to get the update? Read on for a complete list of devices we know are getting 2.0…
Now, we learn today (via Fortune) that Tony Fadell, Nest’s CEO, has had a little passion project going on in the background. Co-founded with its CEO Dave Bell, Actev Motors makes the Arrow Smart-Kart, a smart first of its kind electric go-kart with app controls and a $600 price tag…
A week after the conference wrapped up, Google this evening has made videos of the majority of the Google I/O sessions available on YouTube. The company has created a playlist with 168 videos, all of which are from Google I/O and cover a variety of topics across a variety of Google’s YouTube channels.
After closing arguments wrapped up in the Google vs. Oracle case on Monday, the jury has come to a decision over the use of Java code in Android. Announced moments ago, the jury sided unanimously in Google’s favor.
Google today announced that it will open a self-driving car technology development center in Novi, Michigan, which is about 30 miles outside of Detroit. Google has had teams working from Detroit for the past few years, but this marks the company’s first physical presence in the area.
Update: The financial prosecutor’s office has confirmed that the raid took place, and is part of an investigation in to tax evasion and money laundering. As reported by Reuters:
The investigation, which started in June last year, aims to verify whether Google Ireland Ltd (GOOGL.O) has failed in its fiscal obligations in France, the prosecutor’s office said in statement.
According to several breaking news reports, Google’s headquarters in Paris are being raided this morning by French investigators as part of a probe into the US company’s tax payments. Both Le Parisien and Reuters were informed by sources that a search is underway at the HQ in Paris’s 9th district.
Google is finally about to get the go ahead from the Indian government to run a pilot of Project Loon in India according to a report from the Economic Times. According to the sites source, an anonymous “top government official”, the nation is keen to test as many alternative methods of providing internet connectivity as possible. One of which is Google’s high-altitude balloons.
At Google I/O 2016, the Mountain View company decided — although admittedly not an entirely new theme — that it would be a good idea to spread its announcements across three days. The keynote showed off Google’s vision for the future: virtual reality, its new AI and machine learning initiatives, Google Home hardware to take advantage of them, and a few sprinkles of Android Wear 2.0 goodness. The second day saw the announcement of the Play Store coming to Chrome OS.
But the third day was ATAP day, admittedly my favorite day of Google I/O. Last year the Advanced Technologies and Projects group at Google showed off Project Jacquard, Project Soli, some more details on Project Ara, and more. And then the company went silent. For pretty much an entire year.
Maybe that’s a good thing, as Google tends to show its projects and technologies off a little early in general. It’s not exactly out of Google’s character to show a product or service, say that it’s coming in 6 months, it not arrive for 12 months or 18 months, and then the final product share hardly any resemblance to what was originally announced. Admittedly that’s happening with some of ATAP’s projects either way (I’m looking at you, Ara), but at least it’s not a constant barrage of teases and false hope.
Anyway, Google ATAP finally came out of hiding on the third day of I/O yesterday, and with it came updates on Project Jacquard, Project Soli, Project Ara, and Spotlight Stories. Jacquard brought the announcement of the first retail product based on the tech, Ara brought a little update on how progress is coming including the most current prototype device with new module connectors (and promise of a dev kit coming soon), and the Spotlight Stories mention came with some progress in VR storytelling. All cool stuff.
Power users love shortcuts. Especially when managing multiple operations across several apps, keyboards allow quick access to specific actions with handy combinations of buttons, and some have become so common and used even among regular people that it’d be hard to think of software that doesn’t take advantage of them.
For better or for worse, however, Googleseems to be removing the very common key that allows the Backspace button to move back to the previous page in Chrome…
Google has said today (via Reuters) that its partnership with Fiat Chrysler to build 100 self-driving minivans is just that: a partnership to build 100 self-driving minivans. This somewhat contradicts statements from Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne earlier this month suggesting that, while the deal was in fact limited, it could evolve into something greater…
Android Instant Apps may be one of the coolest announcements that Google made during the I/O 2016 keynote yesterday, and now we had a chance to see the new feature up close…
Google has announced today that it is working with Yi Technology to build a 360-degree circular Jump camera rig from its 4K Action Cam, which will launch later this year. On top of that, it has also revealed a new collaborative partnership with IMAX to develop more high-end commercial film production-quality cameras. In other words: Google’s getting very serious about VR (as if we didn’t know that already).
We spotted the event description yesterday, but Google today finally took the wraps off its plan to bring the Google Play Store to Chrome OS. While the event is just now starting, we’ve spotted a support page on Google’s site that says the feature is coming to three Chromebooks in mid-June, with dozens more devices to follow…
As it turns out, The Vergereports, Auto too is indeed getting a few sweet upgrades, from support for the “Ok Google” hotword recognition to functionalities that let the standalone app be all you need to use it in your car…
Machine learning — a branch of Artificial Intelligence that studies pattern recognition and computational learning — is at the core of many of Google‘s products. Everything from voice search to Maps‘ Street View down to Inbox‘s recently introduced Smart Replies (which are making their way into the just announcedAllo) take advantage of machine learning’s incredible capabilities.
However, Google too seems to acknowledge, “great software shines brightest with great hardware underneath”. This is why, over the past several years, the company has worked on a custom ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) named Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), and it is unveiling it today…
At Google I/O‘s keynote yesterday, one of the highlights of the final unveiling of Android N was all about Virtual Reality. While no “Android VR” headset was announced, the search giant introduced Daydream, a VR platform that will be available within Android N.
According to Clay Bavor, which debuted Daydream on stage, as many as eight big-name partners are already onboard: Samsung, HTC, LG, Xiaomi, ZTE, Asus, Alcatel and Huawei, and today, the latter OEM is giving us some more information about its integration with Google’s VR vision…
Google announced two messaging apps today: Allo and Duo. The first is a new messaging platform that emphasizes expression, security, and the inclusion of Google Assistant. The second app is a take on video messaging, focusing on one thing and one thing only: a reliable 1-to-1 video calling experience.
While Google said that both of these apps would be available sometime this summer, early internal builds have already leaked. Don’t get too excited, though — neither of them work… Expand Expanding Close
It looks like there’s a little tidbit of information that might have been originally planned for the keynote (pulled because of time restraints, maybe?). According to a session description now on the Google I/O website, Google “announced” today that the Google Play Store is coming to Chrome…
Today we announced that we’re adding the best mobile app experiences in the world, Android apps and the Google Play store, to the best browser in the world, Chrome! Come to this session and test your Android apps for Chrome OS. You will get hands on help from our friendly engineers on how to optimize your Android app for Chromebooks. Oh, and we will also be giving the first 50 developers to show up a free Chromebook so they can get a head start bringing their apps to Chrome!
This isn’t exactly surprising as we saw evidence that this was in the cards all the way back in April, but it’s cool nonetheless to see it become official. It looks like this session is going to involve Google showing devs how to test their Android apps on the desktop platform. Also worth noting: the first 50 devs to show up will get a free Chromebook.
We’re on the ground at the event now, so stay tuned as we learn more.
Google had already showed us a glimpse of functionality in Android that made the platform capable of streaming apps from the Play Store without actually installing them — like with AdMob’s ad platform, for instance.
The first announcement of I/O 2016 is Google Assistant. It is a conversational assistant that Googles hopes users will have a continual two way dialogue with. Sundar Pichai hopes to build “each user their own individual Google”.
