Google I/O 2018 has been in the record books for over a week, as it happened on May 8, 2018 — yet people are still talking about the latest in Android P, Google Duplex, Google Assistant, Google News and more — along with a healthy helping of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt, that’s to loudmouths from the Apple community, more on that later).

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If you had no idea what Artificial Intelligence (AI) was before this keynote, it was literally said thousands of times — I hope you know what AI is now after this 2 hour dose of Google.  If you’d like the TLDR of Google I/O 2018, you’ll find it below along with my full analysis:

Source: The Verge, YouTube

Google Assistant

Currently able to work with over 5000 smart devices, getting 30 languages in 80 countries by the end of the year, Google Assistant is shaping up to be one of the best, if not best digital assistants when compared to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa offerings.  Additionally, Assistant is working to be more conversational by negating the need for the requesting person to constant say the trigger phrase, “OK Google” to trigger more subsequent actions, Assistant literally will wait for a second or two, while waiting for additional input.  Multiple Actions are introduced, which work with an “and” thrown in between the commands such as, “Turn off the office lights and set a rice timer for 10 minutes“.

Next came the unveiling of Google Duplex, AI at it’s finest.  Google Duplex is a technology that utilizes Google Assistant to call restaurants and other places to book services for you and potentially more.  Imagine the utility that this can have for those with speech difficulties and more.  Additionally, with Assistant sounding so lifelike with implementations of “mmhhmm” and “ummm” — the conversation can be much easier.  See a demo and reaction from MKBHD, here:

Source: MKBHD, YouTube

This where the FUD (translation: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) come in, usually from pundits on the Apple side such as Rene Ritchie (just Google Rene Ritchie biased, if you don’t believe me), who has a tendency to be extremely biased against any company not named Apple.

Let’s lay a couple of things out so that they can be easily understood:

• For Google to parse through real time communication, the call must be recorded.  With that being said, this will likely be unavailable in certain states due to law.  At the end of the day, as a human, we usually can discern if we are talking to a human or not.
• Assistant will announce itself when it places a call for you, read more here.

So what does the above mean for privacy?  If you receive one of these calls, as a business, and you do not want to engage — hang up and move on.  Google has been addressing privacy and security in many realms. Let’s note that they have one of the most comprehensive and easy to understand privacy statements of any tech company. However, this tech is coming, whether you like it or not and the usefulness of this will be huge, especially for accessibility — all the while companies like Google and others need to help ensure that privacy and security remain at the forefront.

Google News

With Google, there is constant re-branding among many of it’s products and services.  Remember Nexus?  Remember Google Reader?  Remember the Android Market?  All of these either got axed by Google or renamed.  From Nexus to Pixel, Google Reader is just gone and the Android Market is now called Google Play, with Google even working to remove “Play” from many of the names of it’s apps and services.

With that being said, Google Play Newsstand is no more, in comes Google News and oh, is it great.

For You is all about your briefing — what topics have you added and are following, such as Apple, Android, NBA — the list goes on.  What’s excellent about it is that it is a timeline of what’s happening in your world, but that isn’t where Google News stops.

Headlines takes you outside of your comfort zone.  Headlines gives you the latest world, business, tech, entertainment, sports, science and health news without any bearings on your preferences, which truly brings you up to date in what is going on around you while removing you from the bubble that you’ve created with your topics.

Favorites lists out all topics and sources that you’ve added into Google News that you follow.  Additionally, saved stories and magazines find their home here.

Newsstand is all about sources, you can add sources by searching or coming here.

Overall, Google News is a major win and I suggest you try it, unless you believe that everything Google does is of the devil.

Android

Android P is coming, folks and it’s going to bring some incremental changes on top of Oreo, let’s break it down!

This update aims to focus on 3 pillars: Intelligence, Simplicity and Digital Well-Being.

First up, Adaptive Battery (Intelligence), focuses on reducing the number of CPU wake-ups for apps — when these become more and more infrequent, this will reduce the amount of battery drain.

Next, we learned about Predictive Actions (Intelligence), which is all about understanding how you utilize your device so that it doesn’t take you as long to complete certain tasks.  Before we go forward, all of this user data is stored locally on the device and is encrypted.  Ever open your app drawer to scroll down to your favorite workout app…..everyday….at 5 PM — this is one of the things that Predictive Actions will help with.  Android will learn the apps that you use and under which circumstances and group them together at the top of the drawer so that they will be easier for you to get to.

Source: The Verge, YouTube

Followed up by a beta “Nav bar”, which is eerily similar to the bar on iPhone X, just not as graceful in implementation — note that Android P is in beta and while this first implemtation includes a bit of “jank”, I’m expecting this to grow into a good design choice, hopefully.

We all deal with a bit of device addiction to a certain degree.  Under that sentiment, Google will all you to gray-scale your phone after a certain time so that apps and the UI are not as intriguing to you, thus leading you to put it down (Digital Well-Being).

Maps and Waymo

Google Maps leads the way in digital mapping and updates keep making it get better and better.  This years IO showed us a VPS or Visual Positioning System in which the user can hold up their phone to the world and directions will overlay on the real world.

Source: TWiT, YouTube

Maps is good for us and it’s even more vital for self-driving cars.

In comes Waymo (Google’s self-driving car project).

Waymo has been testing it’s software with an early-rider project and users are loving the tech in its initial city, Phoenix.  With 6 million miles driven on public roads, this technology is only going to get better and better with the data being collected, such as “unusual behavior”, which allows the car to detect bad drivers and avoid accidents.

Source: ExpovistaTV, YouTube

Wrapping Up

Google I/O 2018 was long, fun, unneeded fear-mongering and full of excitement, which has been outlined above .  However, there are some things that I didn’t mention, so feel free to watch this wrap up video, from Google Developers:

Source: Google Developers, YouTube