Well, we missed out on Google I/O 2020, but now it’s finally time for Google I/O 2021. While not in person, the annual developer festival in Mountain View, California has returned. The Google I/O 2021 Keynote kicks off at 10am PT/1pm ET, so read on for quick links to our roundup coverage over the last few weeks, some hot takes, and all the latest news about Assistant, Android 12, and ‘Material NEXT’, among many other things.
Catch up
If you haven’t been following along with our coverage over the last several weeks, there’s plenty of required reading to be had there. Here’s everything we know about today’s event:
- Google ‘I/O Adventure’ is a virtual world for demos, chats, & easter eggs [Gallery]
- What to expect from Google I/O 2021: Assistant, Android 12, and ‘Material NEXT’
- Google creates virtual I/O 2021 Photo Booth with mascots, Pixel props
- I/O 2021 gets its own custom hashtag icon on Twitter
- Google hid a mysterious easter egg on the I/O 2021 sweatshirt that counts down to…
How to stream Google I/O 2021
TL;DR the primary Google Developers YouTube channel will stream the entire Google I/O 2021Keynote live, and the announcements start at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm GMT.
More details & embedded player:
Official announcements + details
- Google ‘Smart canvas’ offers a more interactive and integrated Workspace experience
- Google Maps gaining ‘safe routing’ option to help avoid accidents
- ‘LaMDA’ is the next breakthrough of Google’s natural language understanding
- Google Assistant and Duplex can now help you change stolen passwords in Chrome
Live Blog (Reload for continuous updates…)
— Google morning everyone! We’re going to be doing an old-fashioned live blog here as the events of today unfold. It will be filled with all the latest I/O news in text form as it’s happening, so be sure to reload. Also, it will have many hot takes from yours truly!
— Sundar is on the stage and talking covid and its impact over the last year.
— Sundar is talking all the various products that Google has put out to help the world manage COVID-19.
— “In that spirit, let’s get started. This year has given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world’s information… and make it useful.”
— 150K of bike lanes have been added to Google Maps. Google is also adding eco-friendly routes.
As usual, many things you’ll hear about this morning have been announced previously. https://t.co/MTdXxIQHGJ
— Stephen Hall (@hallstephenj) May 18, 2021
— Google Workspace got a front-of-show mention! Docs, Slides, and Sheets.Today, the company is announcing Smart Canvas. Javier is coming out!
— Google Meet is going to be integrated directly into Docs, Sheets, and Slides!
— It looks a lot like Google built an Asana. So that’s cool.
— Now Sundar is on stage talking about Search, Translation, and Google Assistant. Also chatting about Google Photos. Mostly bragging. Not much new here, yet, but we’re waiting patiently.
— “Today, I’m excited to share our latest breakthrough in natural language understanding: LaMDA.”
— This is a pretty incredible tech demo that gives us a good idea of what’s coming next for Google Assistant.
— Google is showing a demo of LaMDA filling the place of inanimate objects that are self-aware. “What’s the worst place you’ve ever landed,” the demo asks a paper airplane. “A puddle,” it says, as it explains why that was so bad.
— “I’m going to go flying. Bye bye,” Sundar lists as one of the nonsensical responses LaMDA would give playing the role of Pluto.
— LaMDA will be able to do things like “Show me the part where the lion roars at sunset” and find that moment in a YouTube video.
— TPUv4 announced. 10^18 floating point operations per second of computing power. 1 exaflop.
— Seems powerful, but I’m not really sure because I don’t understand anything Sundar’s talking about.
— Google is trying to be human-friendly and help us understand quantum computing with an interesting skit. For me, not really doing it.
— Google talking about privacy at Google and auto-deleting your data. It deletes everything after 18 months. Activated on more than 2 billion accounts already.
— Talking security. Ultimately Google wants to get to a password-free future. In the meantime, they’re focused on helping people use strong passwords. Google’s password manager is used by many, many people.
— Four new upgrades for Google’s password manager. A tool for importing passwords. Integration with Chrome and Android. Compromised password alerts. And a quick fix feature in Chrome where Google Assistant helps you navigate to your compromised accounts and fix problems in seconds.
— A few new privacy controls: delete recent search history, a toggle for location history in Google Maps, and locked folder in Google Photos, first coming to Pixel
— Time to talk more about Search!… I guess. Search, Maps, Shopping and Photos, we’re going to cover all four here in this little segment.
— Search! MUM — multitask unified model. 1000x more powerful than BERT. Too bad that no one listening to this knows what BERT is. He’s showing an extremely specific query that search engines today can’t answer. MUM will change Google’s ability to understand natural language questions. MUM can also search across languages.
— Take a photo of boots and ask “Can I use these to hike Mt. Fuji?”, MUM would be able to understand what’s in the image and the context of the question. Pretty impressive.
— Now talking about Google Lens! The last time I used Google Lens was the last time Google announced a new feature for it at Google I/O. AR in Search.
— Tigers to cars… people lost their mind at the beginning of covid playing with AR animals and such. Google says they’re adding some professional athletes like Simone Biles.
— “Is it true that” had more searches last year than “how to bake bread,” Google says. “About this result” with details about a source in Search is rolling out to everyone later this year.
Author: Stephen Hall
Source: 9TO5Google
