Google

Google’s ‘field research’ offered people $5 to scan their faces for the Pixel 4

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The Verge:

As first revealed by ZDNet and Android Police, Google employees have been roving the streets of American cities, offering $5 gift certificates in exchange for a facial scan. Reached by The Verge, Google confirmed that it has been conducting what it calls “field research” to collect face-scanning data in order to improve its algorithms and thereby improve the Pixel 4’s accuracy.

Google, in an email to The Verge:

Our goal is to build the feature with robust security and performance. We’re also building it with inclusiveness in mind, so as many people as possible can benefit.

And:

Google is collecting infrared, color, and depth data from each face along with time, ambient light level, and some related “task” information like picking up the phone from the table. The company initially collected location information as well, but it tells me it doesn’t need that info, so it will cease collecting it and will delete it.

I get the goal here, to improve the accuracy of facial recognition, help tune out any bias. But can’t help but feel we are helping build the master facial recognition database of the future.

That line between being getting better at recognizing faces and offering public facial scanning and recognition is privacy. Two opposing forces, one wanting to pick you out of a crowd for use in security and advertising, and one wanting to preserve true anonymity.

Google just raised the bar for Apple’s Face ID

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Google blog:

Pixel 4 will be the first device with Soli, powering our new Motion Sense features to allow you to skip songs, snooze alarms, and silence phone calls, just by waving your hand. These capabilities are just the start, and just as Pixels get better over time, Motion Sense will evolve as well. Motion Sense will be available in select Pixel countries.

And:

Unlocking your phone should be easy, fast, and secure. Your device should be able to recognize you—and only you—without any fuss. Face unlock may be a familiar feature for smartphones, but we’re engineering it differently.

Differently? How?

Other phones require you to lift the device all the way up, pose in a certain way, wait for it to unlock, and then swipe to get to the homescreen. Pixel 4 does all of that in a much more streamlined way. As you reach for Pixel 4, Soli proactively turns on the face unlock sensors, recognizing that you may want to unlock your phone.

If the face unlock sensors and algorithms recognize you, the phone will open as you pick it up, all in one motion. Better yet, face unlock works in almost any orientation—even if you’re holding it upside down—and you can use it for secure payments and app authentication too.

Assuming this tech works as advertised, Google just raised the bar for Face ID. As is, I often have to shift my iPhone, tweaking the angle to my face, in order to get Face ID to kick in. This is no big deal, but it does throw a delay in there. I almost never have to enter my passcode, but I often have to play a bit for Face ID to kick in.

And though I can get Face ID to kick in with my iPhone a bit off to the side, it never works when sitting flat on my desk or when upside down.

The advantage to Google’s announced approach is that it supports wider angles and orientations, and also starts the recognition process when you reach for your phone, not waiting for a tap on the screen. A subtle point, but a natural next evolution.

Is Apple working on this? I suspect they already have such experiments in the lab, but only release what works really well on all Face ID phones, including the iPhone X. Being able to detect gestures, such as a hand reaching for your phone, no doubt requires some specialized software and powerful machine learning processors. Seems like this should be doable for Apple, given the power of the onboard machine learning hardware already in your iPhone and iPad.

Read the linked Google blog. Interesting stuff.

Google responds to a WSJ report that concluded there are millions of fake business listings on Maps

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First, the Wall Street Journal posted this article about fake businesses hijacking legitimate business names on Google Maps:

The ruse lures the unsuspecting to what appear to be Google-suggested local businesses, a costly and dangerous deception. A man arrived at Ms. Carter’s home in an unmarked van and said he was a company contractor. He wasn’t. After working on the garage door, he asked for $728, nearly twice the cost of previous repairs, Ms. Carter said. He demanded cash or a personal check, but she refused. “I’m at my house by myself with this guy,” she said. “He could have knocked me over dead.” The repairman had hijacked the name of a legitimate business on Google Maps and listed his own phone number.

Google responded to the article with this detailed post. From that post:

We get millions of contributions each day (like new business profiles, reviews, star ratings, and more) and the vast majority of these contributions are helpful and accurate. But occasionally, business scammers take advantage of local listings to make a profit. They do things like charge business owners for services that are actually free, defraud customers by posing as real businesses, and impersonate real businesses to secure leads and then sell them. Even though fake business profiles are a small percentage of the overall business profiles on Google, local business scammers have been a thorn in the internet’s side for over a decade.

And:

We have an entire team dedicated to addressing these issues and taking constant action to remove profiles that violate our policies.

Google goes on to run through numbers, showing how many scams they’ve shut down. Which sort of goes to the point, I think. The problem exists, is massive, and Google is doing all they can, short of making businesses certify themselves in some verifiable way.

A formal verification process would be costly. As is, Google depends on the unpaid public to report fraudulent businesses. Caveat emptor.

YouTube intros AR Beauty Try-On: Try on makeup, virtually, guided by adjacent video

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That was no easy headline to construct. Better just to watch the video embedded in this tweet:

https://twitter.com/claybavor/status/1141142140329680896

You’ve got an AR component, showing your face with different makeup applied, underneath a second pane, guiding you through the process.

This might not apply (sorry!) to you, but the basic concept, with an AR pane adjacent to a guiding video, seems groundbreaking to me.

If you’re interested in learning more, click the headline link to read Google’s official blog post.

Google reacts to “Sign in with Apple”

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If you haven’t already, take a few minutes to read Sarah Perez’s excellent Answers to your burning questions about “Sign in with Apple”.

Once you’ve got your head wrapped around that, follow the headline link for The Verge’s interview with Google product management director Mark Risher. A few highlights:

Apple shook up the world of logins last week, offering a new single sign-on (or SSO) tool aimed at collecting and sharing as little data as possible. It was a deliberate shot at Facebook and Google, which currently operate the two major SSO services.

Not so sure it was a shot at anyone, but more of a safer, privacy respecting solutions for Apple users.

Once you start federating accounts, it means that maybe you still have a few passwords, but some new service you’re just trying out doesn’t need a 750-person engineering team dedicated to security. It doesn’t need to build its own password database, and then deal with all the liability and all the risk that comes with that.

This comment gets to the heart of the value of “Sign in with Apple” (SiwA). One of the benefits of SiwA is that it lets app developers ride on Apple’s safer, more secure coattails. And saves them from having to reinvent the wheel.

I will take the blame that we have not really articulated what happens when you press that “sign in with Google” button. A lot of people don’t understand, and some competitors have dragged it in the wrong direction. Maybe you click that button that it notifies all your friends that you’ve just signed into some embarrassing site.

With SiwA, you can bank on Apple respecting your privacy. Same thing with Apple Pay. Apple breaks the direct link between your identity-tied information and the validation process. And that’s a good thing.

I honestly do think this technology will be better for the internet and will make people much, much safer. Even if they’re clicking our competitors button when they’re logging into sites, that’s still way better than typing in a bespoke username and password, or more commonly, a recycled username and password.

Yup. Good read.

Google uses Gmail to track a history of things you buy — and it’s hard to delete

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CNBC:

Last week, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a New York Times op-ed that said “privacy cannot be a luxury good.” But behind the scenes, Google is still collecting a lot of personal information from the services you use, such as Gmail, and some of it can’t be easily deleted.

Here’s a link to the op-ed, which painted Google as the privacy protector for the masses and Apple as privacy for the elite.

The op-ed really rubbed me the wrong way, felt like hypocrisy of the worst kind. And this CNBC post does a nice job laying out exactly why.

Google says it doesn’t use your Gmail to show you ads and promises it “does not sell your personal information, which includes your Gmail and Google Account information,” and does “not share your personal information with advertisers, unless you have asked us to.”

But, for reasons that still aren’t clear, it’s pulling that information out of your Gmail and dumping it into a “Purchases” page most people don’t seem to know exists. Even if it’s not being used for ads, there’s no clear reason why Google would need to track years of purchases and make it hard to delete that information.

The article gets specific, showing purchases not made through Google that are tracked by Google and not easily deleted. How is this privacy for the masses?

Google Pixel 3a and 3a XL teardowns

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[VIDEO] Follow the headline link to the iFixit teardown page for the Google Pixel 3a. Lots of step-by-step images and details. This is one of the most easy to take apart phones on the market but, that said, it is still an incredibly complex puzzle to put back together.

Take a look if your inner nerd runs that way.

And, if video is more your thing, embedded in the main Loop post is the teardown of the Pixel 3a XL.

Google pitching the $399 Pixel 3A as the privacy respecting smartphone for the masses

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I have to say, when I first heard the Google Pixel 3A announcement, I was intrigued. Google has shipped a lot in that $399 package. Was this the phone that was going to temp people to cross the line from Apple’s walled garden into Google’s data collecting machine?

From this New York Times review:

The Pixel 3A lacks some frills you may find in premium devices, like wireless charging and water resistance. But based on my tests, it is a great value. It’s fast and capable with a very good camera and a nice-looking screen — and, yes, especially for this price.

And:

Among the clever camera features is a software mode called Night Sight, which makes photos taken in low light look as if they had been shot in normal conditions, without a flash. Google accomplishes this with some A.I. sorcery that involves taking a burst of photos with short exposures and reassembling them into an image.

I was delighted to see that Night Sight worked well with the Pixel 3A.

And:

The Pixel 3A can also shoot images with portrait mode, also known as the bokeh effect, which puts the picture’s main subject in sharp focus while gently blurring the background. Portrait mode was effective at producing artsy-looking pictures of red flowers in a garden and of my dogs in a field.

And:

Anecdotally, I’ve had better results with portrait mode on the pricier Pixel 3 and iPhones.

Otherwise, normal shots in good lighting consistently looked crisp and clear, with nice shadow detail.

And:

Other features missing from the Pixel 3A include support for wireless charging, a wide-angle lens on its front-facing camera and water resistance. Most of these omissions are negligible.

The way I read this is, the Pixel 3A is a good enough camera. A bit slower than it’s twice-the-price sibling, but good enough for most people.

And the Pixel 3A will be getting far bigger distribution. From Reuters:

The phone will sell in the same 13 countries as the Pixel 3.

And while Pixel devices currently work on T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular networks, those U.S. wireless carriers will also begin to sell the phones starting Wednesday, along with Verizon.

And:

Google had discussions with AT&T, another major U.S. carrier, but could not overcome some differences, according to people familiar with the matter. But Google and AT&T continue to discuss the possibility of stocking smartphones in the future, one of the people said.

And from this Verge review:

On the Pixel 3, you get free unlimited backups of the original resolution photos you’ve taken with the phone. The Pixel 3A is limited to free “high quality” backups, and it makes you pay for more storage if you upload too many original quality photos, just like any other phone. I suppose that’s one way to help get to that $399 price, but I think it’s a cheap move.

And this brings us to privacy. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Sundar Pichai pitched Google as the privacy loving company, here to make sure privacy is available to all, not just those who can afford high priced phones from their competitors.

I posted the question on Twitter, asking if people bought Sundar’s pitch. And the universal response was no. Even from Android folks. Google’s business model is based on collecting data to fuel their ad business. Hard to reframe that as “serving the people”.

I see the Pixel 3A as a great little phone. But I see it as the low priced razor. For the razor, the money is in razor blade sales. With the low priced Pixel 3A, the money is in ad sales.

An interesting strategy, Google.

Google’s Sundar Pichai: Privacy should not be a luxury good

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Sundar Pichai, in New York Times op-ed:

Over the past 20 years, billions of people have trusted Google with questions they wouldn’t have asked their closest friends: How do you know if you’re in love? Why isn’t my baby sleeping? What is this weird rash on my arm? We’ve worked hard to continually earn that trust by providing accurate answers and keeping your questions private.

And:

“For everyone” is a core philosophy for Google; it’s built into our mission to create products that are universally accessible and useful. That’s why Search works the same for everyone, whether you’re a professor at Harvard or a student in rural Indonesia. And it’s why we care just as much about the experience on low-cost phones in countries starting to come online as we do about the experience on high-end phones.

And:

Privacy cannot be a luxury good offered only to people who can afford to buy premium products and services. Privacy must be equally available to everyone in the world.

This op-ed is fascinating to me. Feels like Google recognizes Apple’s incorporation of privacy into its brand as a foundational policy. And it feels like Google recognizes how important the issue of privacy has become as a product discriminator.

And, finally, this feels like shots across Apple’s bow. As in, Apple values privacy, but only for the people who can afford their products. With Google’s release of the Pixel 3a, priced at $399, feels like Sundar Pichai is pitching Google, and the pixel, as the privacy-respecting product for the masses.

Anyone buying this?

YouTube bows out of Hollywood arms race with Netflix, Amazon and, coming soon, Apple

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Bloomberg:

YouTube has canceled plans for high-end dramas and comedies, people with knowledge of the matter said, a pullback from its grand ambitions for a paid service with Hollywood-quality shows.

And:

The retreat from direct competition with Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video service reflects the high cost — in billions of dollars — needed to take on those deeply entrenched players, even for a rich tech giant like Google, the people said.

Interesting timing. We’ll know a lot more about Apple’s plans in just a few hours.

UPDATE: Via TechCrunch:

On the heels of Apple announcing paid, monthly subscription services for video, games, and news, YouTube says it is also doubling down original video content. Parent company Google has denied a report in Bloomberg that YouTube has stopped accepting pitches for scripted shows. But it also confirmed another aspect of the same report: it plans a big focus on paid subscriptions by introducing an ad-supported slate that will include new and existing series in the coming weeks.

Google’s huge new bet on the future of gaming

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Gizmodo:

In a keynote at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today Google announced a new service, Stadia, that will allow gamers to play the biggest games on any Android or Chrome-based device (including any device with a Chrome browser).

And:

Google’s Stadia service works on any device that supports the Chromecast protocol, which means iOS, Android, Chrome OS, macOS, Windows, and even the Chromecast dongle. They all speak to one of Google’s 7,500 data center nodes (which span the globe) and recognize your specific account, allowing you to move from one device to the other without a bunch of messy handoffs between systems, because the actual game is running at the data center.

This is no small thing. First we had cartridges and disks, physical media, that meant you had to wait for a game to ship to you, then connect and install. Then we had downloadable content, which made things faster, catered to the impulse buyer who wanted their games right now.

But Stadia is a whole different spin on this model. Your games run on Google’s servers. Startup is pretty much instantaneous, with Google controlling everything.

A few obvious concerns: You’ll be running games under Google’s auspices, using a Google account. And then there’s latency and bandwidth.

But there have been two big problems with this: Latency, which might make games needing finesse, like shooter and fighting games, unplayable, and internet throughput. Streaming a game eats up a lot of data and even the Google Stream beta required about 25Mbps in order to stream anything remotely playable and attractive. Google has not yet disclosed the speed requirements for Stadia.

One solution it’s presented for handling latency is a new controller that connects directly to Google’s servers instead of to the device you’re playing on. That should, theoretically, reduce the amount of input lag.

All this is still a big bag of unknowns, an announcement and not a shipping product. But that controller looks real enough and Stadia does seem like it will see the light of day.

One thing I loved, was that old school gamer Easter egg on the underside of the controller.

A Google Maps product naming story

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From this Twitter thread:

There was a geeky holy war on the Maps team. When Lars checked in the code to switch between maps and imagery, he called it “Satellite.” We were quickly informed that a significant % of the images were taken from airplanes — “Aerial Photography.” Our name was factually incorrect.

The story digs into the crazy process Google used to come up with an appropriate alternative to “Satellite” for Google Maps.

Fascinating.

Google Maps shows off their version of AR. This coming for Apple Maps?

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[VIDEO] The video embedded in the main Loop post shows off a special, limited rollout version of Google Maps with augmented reality baked right in. Unlike some preannounced features intended for the dog and pony circuit, this app is in the hands of a number of VIP Google Maps users and seems likely to eventually make it onto your device.

I can’t imagine Apple is not hard at work on AR for Apple Maps, perhaps tied to Apple Glasses, or as an automotive heads up display.

And in a related thought: Are heads up displays headed for extinction, if and when self-driving vehicles hit the mainstream?

YouTube’s copyright strikes have become a tool for extortion

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Shoshana Wodinsky, The Verge:

An anonymous blackmailer has caught at least two YouTube creators in a scheme involving cash ransoms and esoteric copyright laws.

Last week, both creators shared stories of how their channels were being threatened with a third copyright strike — and the possible termination of their channels — from an anonymous extortionist. The scammer offered to reverse the strikes in return for payment to a bitcoin wallet.

It’s a balance issue. Copyright strikes let copyright holders protect their content, but open the doors to this sort of extortion.

Those who are able to appeal the strikes don’t have it much easier. The process, when successful, can take at least a month — and during that time, “you can’t upload at all,” according to Pierce Riola, a voice actor whose YouTube channel been hit by similar extortion scams in the past.

Interesting read. Reminds me of the issue in the iOS App Store, where copycats copy successful apps, down to the pixel, and the original creators are stuck between the hard rock of legally pursuing the copiers, or pressing Apple for a takedown, which can take time, if successful at all.

In the YouTube channel example, should this be YouTube’s responsibility to fix? In the case of the App Store, does Apple have a responsibility to prevent or repair the app copying scourge?

Google: Can you spot when you’re being phished?

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Think you can tell if you’re being phished? Take Google’s quiz, see if you get a perfect score.

Note that when they ask you to enter a name and email at the beginning, it’s fine to just make one up. They want to use the info in the quiz, not harvest the data.

We broke into a bunch of Android phones with a 3D-printed head

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Thomas Brewster, Forbes:

We tested four of the hottest handsets running Google’s operating systems and Apple’s iPhone to see how easy it’d be to break into them. We did it with a 3D-printed head. All of the Androids opened with the fake. Apple’s phone, however, was impenetrable.

And:

An iPhone X and four Android devices: an LG G7 ThinQ, a Samsung S9, a Samsung Note 8 and a OnePlus 6. I then held up my fake head to the devices to see if the device would unlock. For all four Android phones, the spoof face was able to open the phone, though with differing degrees of ease. The iPhone X was the only one to never be fooled.

And:

When first turning on a brand new G7, LG actually warns the user against turning facial recognition on at all. “Face recognition is a secondary unlock method that results in your phone being less secure,” it says, noting that a similar face can unlock your phone. No surprise then that, on initial testing, the 3D-printed head opened it straightaway.

And:

There’s a similar warning on the Samsung S9 on sign up. “Your phone could be unlocked by someone or something that looks like you,” it notes.

What I get from these tests: Android facial recognition is for convenience. Apple’s Face ID is for both convenience and security.

The Best iPhone and Android Apps of 2018

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Solid list from the folks at Time Magazine, albeit short. There more pages to this that I missed?

One thing that struck me: All 10 apps on this list run on iOS. Three of them also run on Android. This simply iOS bias? Or something more, perhaps a comment on the craft/tools/devs in each community?

The friendship that made Google huge

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Just start reading. A terrific story about Google’s very first employee, and the likeminded friend he made in the early days of Google.

This is one of those, grab a beverage, put your feet up, relax and settle in kind of reads. Enjoy.

“I don’t think I’ve created anything new outside Google Docs for a couple of years now.”

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Fraser Speirs, in a post titled On Switching from an iPad Pro and a Macbook to a Pixelbook (via Michael Tsai’s excellent blog):

Fast forward to 2018 and virtually all of the work I do at school is now in Google Docs. I don’t think I’ve created anything new outside Google Docs for a couple of years now.

I do use Google Docs, and most of the simple documents I create live either there, or in some form of Markdown editor (almost always in BBEdit).

But I do a lot more creating than simple documents. I take lots of photos, mark them up, screenshots, too. I share these images in all sorts of social media. I draw pictures, though quite inexpertly, and share those as well. And there’s programming. Most of that is done on a Mac in Xcode.

And most of my communication is via apps. And a lot of that communication involves “creating”, since I consider writing to be creating. And, of course, there’s music, via Garage Band or Logic.

I find it interesting that though Google Docs does own a ton of mindshare for simple documents, once creativity enters the picture, the more I rely on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Google’s cheap and super-simple cellphone service will now work with iPhones

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CNBC:

Google Fi (formerly known as Project Fi) is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which means that instead of just using one of the “big four” carriers, it automatically jumps between several cellular networks depending on which has better service. Fi hops between Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular, and also favors Wi-Fi whenever possible, including for calls and texts.

And:

It costs $20 for unlimited calling and texting, and $10 per gigabyte of data. Users get money back for whatever data they don’t use, and data usage over 6 GB is free (though Google will throttle speeds after users hit 15 GB). It also has no roaming fees in more than 170 locations.

This something Apple could do? Is there some contractual agreement that prevents this? Interesting development.

You can now use a Siri Shortcut to trigger Google Assistant

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Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

Google released an exciting update for its Assistant iOS app today, bringing support for Siri shortcuts and, for the first time, opening lines of communication between the two competing assistants.

And:

With the latest update, you can set up a shortcut in iOS to immediately, via Siri, trigger any command you’d like to give Google’s Assistant.

To me, this is yet another sign of the game-changing nature, of the great value Shortcuts brings to the table.

Google launches free online image convertor

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It’s called Squoosh, and it runs just fine on Safari for macOS or iOS.

Two keys to keep in mind as you play:

  • There’s a draggable dividing line that shows the original image on one side and the converted image on the other.
  • There’s a popup menu that lets you select the destination format for the converted image.

Play. Enjoy.

Fixing Wear OS: How Google could fight back against the Apple Watch

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Wareable:

There’s no doubt Wear OS is living in the shadow of the Apple Watch right now – while manufacturers are usually coy about exact smartwatch sales, analysts suggest the Apple smartwatch has a substantially bigger market share than Google’s platform.

The Apple wearable has also been given consistent and useful refreshes in the three years since its launch, across both its hardware and its software, leaving Wear OS looking sluggish and fragmented by comparison.

To me, as long as the Android OS update model continues to be fragmented, leaving many more users using older OS versions than the tiny sliver who use the latest and greatest, Apple Watch just has an insurmountable advantage.

It’s not your imagination: Phone battery life is getting worse

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Geoffrey A Fowler, Washington Post:

If you recently bought a new flagship phone, chances are its battery life is actually worse than an older model.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year’s top models underperformed last year’s. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year’s iPhone X. Google’s Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.

Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can’t keep up.

In a nutshell, the case being made here is that battery efficiency is growing very slowly, while screen technology (and other) power draw is growing somewhat faster than that.

Google to work with iRobot’s robot vacuums on mapping the inside of your house

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The Verge:

Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes “more thoughtful” by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes.

And:

“Much like assigning smart lights or other smart devices to rooms in the home, the Assistant only learns what names people have given to areas of their homes, so that it can then deploy the iRobot i7+ to that area,” said Google in a statement. “We do not receive any information on the layout of the home or where the areas are, respectively.”

Very interesting read. AI continues its creep inside your home. Though Google says they do not receive the mapping info, I am skeptical that that info won’t eventually find its way outside, even if it’s via the work of hackers.

And if you find yourself asking, who cares about room data? It’s an avenue, a path to a future where all your data is visible to outside agencies, a pinprick in the balloon of privacy.

Google’s Night Sight for Pixel phones will amaze you

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Vlad Savov, The Verge:

Night Sight is the next evolution of Google’s computational photography, combining machine learning, clever algorithms, and up to four seconds of exposure to generate shockingly good low-light images.

Wow. Just wow. Take a minute to look at these images.