GOOGLE RANKED NO.3 INNOVATIVE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS COMPANY
Google has been a leader
in web services since its launch in 1998, and now 20 years later it is finally
also a leader in consumer hardware experiences powered by its software and
artificial intelligence expertise. The Pixel 3 smartphone and its Google Home
smart speaker reflect the maturation of Google's hardware business, delivering
aesthetically pleasing, cheery devices that take full advantage of Google's
services. The third-generation Pixel, for example, allows for advanced control
of the phone using voice commands, and its exclusive call-screen feature
requires callers to state their reason for calling before making the
connection, which is a welcome convenience as phone spam
proliferates.
When Google CEO Larry Page created a new holding company called Alphabet in 2015, initiatives such as self-driving cars and
health tech got divvied up into new companies, and Google became an Alphabet
division with a sharper focus on internet services and software. Today’s
Google, now led by CEO Sundar
Pichai, still dominates web search and online advertising sales. It
has the most widely used mobile operating system (Android) and web browser
(Chrome). Other venerable offerings, such as YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps,
continue to be the 800-pound gorillas of their respective categories.
For all the areas where
Google is a leader, there are plenty of other markets it covets. In 2016, it
centralized its hardware operations and launched its most ambitious lineup of
devices to date, including the Pixel phone, Google Home
smart speaker, Daydream View VR
headset, and Google Wi-Fi
wireless-networking system. It also introduced Google Allo, a communications
app designed to compete with Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp. And it gave its
enterprise group a new name—Google Cloud—and redoubled its effort to turn that
suite of tools into a formidable rival to Amazon Web Services.
Google’s nascent Tango
project aims to measure physical space without the need for GPS or other
external signals, putting all the technology inside a mobile device such as a
phone or tablet. Tango enables positional augmented reality in any kind of
space—such as your living room—in a way that’s never been possible before. The
implications could be huge--augmented reality apps that allow users to easily
see what a room would be like with or without furniture, for example. For now,
there aren’t many devices incorporating Tango, but they’re coming. The first
Tango phone, the Lenovo Phab 2, launched in November 2016.
These projects may look
far-flung, as if Google wants to compete with everybody. But the overarching
idea is to tie everything together via the company’s areas of
expertise—particularly in artificial intelligence, which powers the new
Alexa-like Google Assistant service. It’s a take on ecosystem-building designed
to revitalize Google’s original mission: organizing the world’s information and
making it universally accessible and useful.
www.fastcompany.com
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