Google intensifies AI, smart home, virtual reality push
From a connected-home device
called Google Home to the Daydream virtual reality headset and the Allo
messaging app, Google devoted much of its annual IO press conference playing
catch-up to rivals Apple, Facebook and Amazon
Google wants to play an
even bigger role in managing people's daily lives, while also nudging them into
an alternate re ality, as the internet company re sponds to competitive threats
posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
As part of an onslaught of
upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial
intelligence into an internetconnected device called Home, which echoes the
Echo, Amazon.com's trendy smart-home speaker.
Meanwhile, Google will also
delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system
called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus' early lead in
fabricating artificial worlds.
In an attempt to outshine
Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system,
including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device.
That feature, called
Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced at
its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater a few blocks from its
Mountain View, California, headquarters.
It's the first time that
Google has held the conference in its hometown since the inaugural event in
2006. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told a crowd of more than 7,000 people that he
wanted to move the conference from San Francisco back to Mountain View to
underscore a “pivotal moment in terms of where the company is going.“
Instant Apps is Google's
answer to the pain of installing phone apps you know you'll use just once or
twice, for shopping or booking a parking spot, for example. With this approach,
the app runs on Google's servers instead of your phone.Only the parts you need
are sent to your phone on an as-needed basis.
There will also be a new
chat service called Allo that's designed to counter Facebook's Messenger app
and WhatsApp. Allo will draw upon a vast database that Google has built through
its dominant internet search engine to predict how you might want to respond to
a text and automatically fetch links to video clips and other information that
seem relevant to an ongoing conversation.
Although the new products
will offer some unique features, they mostly painted a picture of acompany
scrambling to catch up with its rivals. “The technology looks good in
principle, but there's a significant risk that Google is coming into some of
these markets too late to make a difference,“ said Jackdaw Research analyst Jan
Dawson.
Google Home, for instance,
will mostly do the same things already performed by the Echo, acylinder-like
speaker that Amazon released last year. The Echo responds to voice commands to
play music, read books, answer questions and manage calendars. It also turns
off the lights, hails Uber rides and keeps adding new tasks as programmers
build more apps for it.
Not surprisingly, Google
touted its Home speaker as a more intelligent and versatile device, mostly
because it can tap into the same stockpile of information that makes Google's
internet search place so popular. Google also has redesigned its virtual
assistant to be more conversational and intuitive. It will be the voice and
brains inside Google Home.
Although it is meant to be
more personal than the automated voice that Google currently uses to respond to
spoken requests on smartphones and computers, the company is simply calling it
“Assistant.“ That contrasts with the human names given to other virtual
assistants from Amazon (Alexa), Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana).
Google didn't reveal a
price for the Home device, though it presumably will be competitive with the
Echo, which sells for $180 (Rs 12,000).Even if Home proves to be superior to
the Echo, Gartner analyst Brian Blau thinks Google will be hard-pressed to
surpass Amazon in the category.
Amazon's leadership in
e-commerce means its Echo “can always be on the front-page of Amazon's site and
that is going to make it difficult for any rival to catch up,“ Blau said.
Daydream is a new virtual
reality ecosystem that will be made available to all comers, duplicating a
strategy that worked well for Google after it fell behind Apple following the
iPhone's debut nearly a decade ago.
To get the ball rolling,
Google will sell a virtual-reality headset with a wireless motion controller
expected to carry the Nexus brand that the company originally created as a
showcase for its Android operating system for smartphones.
Google didn't announce the
price for the VR headset at the conference, nor did it specify when it will hit
the market. A similar headset, the Gear VR, made by Samsung and powered by
Facebook's Oculus subsidiary, costs Rs 8,200.
Consumers will need a new
smartphone to power the headset. It is going to be tethered to the “N“ version
of Android that Google plans to release this year and requires processing power
and sensors unavailable in any phone already out.
The new headset marks a
major upgrade from Google's initial foray into VR in 2014, a cheap model made
out of cardboard that sells for as little as Rs150 and is even given away in
sales promotions by some companies. “You could say Google has been the
paperbased leader in VR, but otherwise Google is well behind Facebook in VR,“
Blau said.
Google's new VR headset
won't be as sophisticated as the recently released Rift from Oculus, which
costs over Rs 35,000 and must be tethered to computers that can cost another Rs
70,000 or so. Oculus spent several years perfecting the Rift, which features
technology that looks so revolutionary that Facebook paid $2 billion to buy the
startup in 2014. WITH AGENCY INPUTS
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