Google

What I learned about my iPhone after switching to the Google Pixel

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Khoi, Subtraction.com, on switching from the iPhone to the Pixel:

To be sure, it’s a terrific phone. It has a world class still camera that just about lives up to its hype, and to me the operating system has never felt as united with its hardware as it does in this phone.

As much as I tried though, after living with this device for several weeks I still felt that there were several stumbling blocks to jumping entirely to Android. Whether you consider it lock-in or value-add, Apple’s ecosystem is a powerful argument for sticking with the iPhone.

Interesting read, pulls no punches.

YouTube reaches settlement over songwriting royalties

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Ben Sisario, New York Times:

On Thursday, YouTube, which is by most estimates the most popular destination for music online, announced that it had reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers’ Association, a trade group, over the complex issue of unpaid songwriting royalties.

And:

In a persistent problem for the online music business, large numbers of songs have missing or incorrect data about their songwriters and which music publishers represent them, leaving what is widely estimated to be millions of dollars unpaid.

And:

The agreement with YouTube, which is owned by Google, will give participating publishers — the companies that traditionally manage songwriting rights, which are separate from those of recordings — access to a list of songs for which YouTube has missing or incomplete rights data. YouTube will then pay any accrued royalties from a fund it has set aside for this purpose.

The best solution would be to get the data right in the first place, to make sure the songwriters who wrote the song that drives YouTube’s music views get paid properly. But this seems a step in the right direction.

Google’s emoji Twitter bot

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If you type an emoji, followed by @Google, you’ll eventually get a response from Google, using the #KnowNearby hash tag, with a localized search based on the emoji.

For example:

?@Google

will return a search for local pizza.

This is interesting, but the response takes too long to be truly useful. I do like the experiment, though.

PSA: Don’t mess with the Google!

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Interesting story, via the Dan’s Deals site. In a nutshell, people in the forum started reporting that they had lost access to their gmail accounts, the accounts suspended due to terms of service violation.

From the article:

It turns out the common denominator is that they had all bought Google Pixel phones and shipped them to a phone dealer in New Hampshire who paid them a profit on each phone. There is no sales tax in New Hampshire and the phones are then resold to others.

The problem is that many of them didn’t read the terms that they agreed to when buying the phone from the Google store. Those state “You may only purchase Devices for your personal use. You may not commercially resell any Device, but you may give the Device as a gift.”

If true, this seems an overreach on Google’s part, suspending access to someone’s email for this sort of violation, rather than simply voiding the sale.

The Google Pixel has an excellent camera, but not much else

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In the Quartz review, Mike Murphy gives the Google Pixel its due, highlighting the camera, digital video image stabilization, endless photo space, rapid charging as positives, but then read the rest of the article.

Mixpanel shows iOS 10 adoption up past 73%

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With iOS 9 adoption at 22.3%, that means that more than 95% of iOS users are at iOS 9 or later. Those are numbers that Android can only dream of.

Was the Google Pixel built in a mere 9 months? It would explain a lot…

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Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica:

The most interesting tidbit comes from David Pierce, a senior staff writer at our sister site Wired. Speaking on the Wired Podcast, Pierce said he was told that the Pixel phones had a mere nine months of development time. After asking Google why the phone didn’t have the same level of water resistance as other high-end flagships, Pierce said, “their answer was essentially ‘We ran out of time.’ There apparently had been this plan for a long time, and at the end of 2015, they blew it all up and started over. So they essentially went from nothing to launch in nine months and a week.”

And:

Let’s examine this timeline. Why would Google “blow everything up” at the end of 2015? We can fill in the blanks with a report from Android Police, which claims that Google’s 2016 smartphone lineup was originally going to be built by Huawei.

“Shortly after the Nexus 5X and 6P launched, Google began talks with Huawei to produce its 2016 smartphone portfolio,” the report reads. “Google, though, set a hard rule for the partnership: Huawei would be relegated to a manufacturing role, producing phones with Google branding.” According to the report, Huawei balked at the lack of branding, and “CEO Richard Yu himself ended negotiations with Google right then and there.”

If we put these two accounts together, it’s easy to conclude that Google and Huawei’s talks ate into the development time of the Google/HTC Pixel. When the decision to go with a self-branded phone came down, Huawei walked away, which led to—as Pierce said—Google “blowing everything up” and switching to HTC.

To some, the Ars Technica headline might imply that the Pixel is less than excellent. I’ll leave that to others to judge, but the Pixel certainly has a lot of fans. To me, getting there with only 9 months of dedicated engineering calendar time is incredibly impressive. The backstory is interesting, though.

Siri versus Google Assistant

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Marques Brownlee put together the video below, taking Siri and Google Assistant, side by side, through their paces. The set of questions Marques chose were wide in range, but not necessarily definitive. They poked at the boundary of what each assistant did well and poorly, without digging further to find the cliff for each.

There’s a lot to learn watching this. First, it’s clear that Siri holds her own against Google Assistant, despite all the naysaying out there. Neither is perfect, both are useful.

My sense is that both assistants are tree driven, able to answer questions that are within their tree of knowledge. But one cliff for both assistants is context. For example, Marques asked Siri:

Who is the President of the United States?

[Read the main post for the video and thoughts on both]

Apple sits atop Interbrand’s yearly Best Global Brand list

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There’s Apple, at number one. No big surprise. Google, Coca Cola follow at number 2 and 3. And there’s Samsung at number 7. Wondering what impact, if any, the Galaxy Note 7 debacle will have on the Samsung brand value.

Google Assistant will live in three places, each with different features

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[See original post for VIDEO]

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge:

Nailing down exactly what the Google Assistant is capable of can be strangely difficult right now. That’s because Google currently has three different ways to use the Google Assistant. Google says it’s the same Assistant in each place, but it can (and can’t) do different things depending on where you use it.

  • Google Assistant on Google Home (the new speaker)
  • Google Assistant on Pixel (the new phones)
  • Google Assistant on Allo (the new-ish chat app)

At its core, Google Assistant is a model of you, with threads through your life, your calendar, your photos and other media, your travel plans, food ordering habits, etc. Each of these examples is a window into your Google model and a well-defined read and write access to that model.

One of the challenges to creating this sort of model is the ability to keep that model online and distributed. Ideally, you’d be online with a super-fast net connection with secure, unlimited storage at all times. That would mean storing your model in a central repository and giving access to the various assistants as needed.

But real life imposes limits such as limited net access, limited storage, and different form factors. Getting all these pieces to play together is a daunting challenge.

Notably, Apple has been meditating on this problem since the early days of the Mac. Check out this Knowledge Navigator video from 1987. This is an incredibly complex problem, and solutions are still in their infancy. Fascinating to watch this unfold.

One thing Google’s Pixel offers that Apple doesn’t

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From the fine print at the bottom of Google’s official Pixel Phone page:

Unlimited backups for photos and videos taken with your Pixel. Requires Google account. Data rates may apply.

There are a number of fronts in the battle between Google and Apple for the hearts and minds of smartphone users. One well-defined line in the sand is for media storage. Do you pay a monthly fee for an iCloud account to store your photos, as well as updates and backups?

Google has thrown down the gauntlet, offering free unlimited media storage for Pixel buyers. This move will be difficult for other Android phone manufacturers to match, since the photos go to Google’s servers, even if the phone is made by, say, Samsung.

Apple does control the entire path from camera to photo storage. The question is, will Apple address this challenge directly?

That new Google phone isn’t water resistant, and I’m sure you can guess why

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At the heart of Google’s new marketing campaign is a razor sharp jab at Apple:

3.5mm headphone jack satisfyingly not new

That headphone jack is an ingress point for water. Obviously, that’s a problem that can be solved (as Samsung does), but Google chose not to, and made a point of chastising Apple for going down that road.

Google is pouring on the marketing here. Spend a few minutes with the official Pixel page. Is this hype, or is this progress?

UPDATE: This is one of those posts where I just shouldn’t have hit enter. Lots of pushback, deservedly so, but we don’t delete posts, so all I can do is say I’ll try to do better.

Google’s new phone, with a not-so-subtle jab at Apple

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[VIDEO in the main post] Google’s new phone, introduced with this text:

Introducing Pixel, a new phone by Google. It has the highest rated smartphone camera. Ever. A battery that lasts all day. Unlimited storage for all your photos and videos. And it’s the first phone with the Google Assistant built in.

And:

With a best-ever 89 DxOMark Mobile score, Pixel’s camera lets you take brilliant photos in low light, bright light or any light.

And:

  • f/2.0 Aperture – For bright, even photos.
  • Large 1.55μm pixels – For great shots in any light.
  • 12.3MP – For sharp, crisp images.

I’ll leave it to the camera pros to do a side-by-side comparison between the Pixel and the iPhone 7 Plus cameras. Bold claim, though.

Oh, and right there in the middle of the video:

3.5mm headphone jack satisfyingly not new

Yeah, we know who that was aimed at.

“Even if you uninstall Google Maps, Google Play’s background service is tracking your location 24/7”

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Mustafa Al-Bassam tweets:

Yesterday I almost had a heart attack when I entered McDonald’s and I had a notification on my phone asking me to install their app.

And:

It seems that with the latest versions of Android, Google Maps is on 24/7, waiting to send you notifications, with no way to disable it.

And:

Even if you uninstall Google Maps, Google Play’s background service is tracking your location 24/7.

As proof, that last tweet includes some screen shots with the details.

Is this a bug? Intentional? Is this info saved on your phone? Does your location data ever leave your phone, headed for Google’s servers?

On the flip side, Apple exposes Location Services with a switch in Settings > Privacy > Location Services. That switch controls location data for my iOS device and my tethered Apple Watch. According to Apple, if that switch is off, the only time my location is used is when I place an emergency call.

Interestingly, the tweet above was retweeted by Edward Snowden.

The wind is blowing from the Android shores toward the iPhone

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Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld:

If we take ComScore figures for January 2016 we see that around 198.5 million people in the US own smartphones. 52.8 percent of these use Android and 43.6 percent use iPhones, ComScore claims.

If we use ComScore’s figures as base we can make some estimates based on Fluent’s research. Fluent believes 29 percent of all iPhone users will definitely buy a new phone this year, and while 87 percent of them will stick with Apple (21.8 million), 6 percent will switch to Android. This suggests that around 1.5 million US iPhone users will make this switch.

And:

22 percent of Android users will “definitely” upgrade their device this year, and while 76 percent of them will stick with that platform, 17 percent will switch to iPhone. This works out to mean 3.91 million Android users seem likely to switch to Apple’s new iPhone this year.

1.5 million leave, 3.9 million arrive. Clearly, the wind is blowing from the Android shores toward the iPhone.

Microsoft’s iPhone keyboard takes aim at Google with new built-in search

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Verge:

Microsoft has released a big update for its Word Flow keyboard on the iPhone this week. The biggest addition is a new search interface that lets you find GIFs, emoji, images, contacts, and anything from Bing search results without leaving the keyboard. Microsoft’s GIF search feature copies the animated pictures into your clipboard, allowing you to paste them in. Word Flow will even pick out GIFs from words you type, so if you say “deal with it” in a message you’ll get a GIF icon that brings up the relevant image.

Interesting to see the keyboard as a point of search competition between Google and Bing.

With iOS 10 release a few weeks away, iOS 9 adoption hits 87 percent

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Christian Zibreg, writing for iDownloadBlog:

Various editions of iOS 9 are currently installed on 87 percent of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, a one-point gain versus a month ago.

And:

By comparison, Google’s official stats have Android 6.0 Marshmallow powering 15.2 percent of smartphones and tablets, with the two-year-old Lollipop (5.0-5.1) OS found on more than one-third of Android hardware (35.3 percent).

Stinging commercial for iOS Google Photos app

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[VIDEO] This one hits close to home. Though releasing a 16 GB base model makes this “Storage Full” message much more likely, this message is always a possibility in any scenario, unless your photos live in the cloud and you can guarantee constant internet access and unlimited cloud storage.

Motorola confirms that they will not commit to monthly Android security patches

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Ars Technica:

When we recently reviewed the Moto Z, we said that the device would not be getting Android’s monthly security updates. Motorola doesn’t make this information officially available anywhere, but when we asked Motorola reps at the Moto Z launch event if the company would commit to the monthly updates, we were flatly told “no.”

And:

Motorola has clarified the update situation of the Moto Z and Moto G4, calling Android’s monthly security updates “difficult” and deciding not to commit to them.

Tough to say no to an update that patches a known security vulnerability.

From Moto:

We strive to push security patches as quickly as possible. However, because of the amount of testing and approvals that are necessary to deploy them, it’s difficult to do this on a monthly basis for all our devices. It is often most efficient for us to bundle security updates in a scheduled Maintenance Release (MR) or OS upgrade.

That delay is no small thing, security-wise.

Apple regains status as world’s favorite company

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CNET:

Each year, FutureBrand looks at the 100 biggest companies by market capitalization, asks 3,000 consumers and industry professionals in 17 countries about them and produces a ranking of what it calls perception strength, rather than financial strength.

This year shows Apple regaining the top spot, after last year’s painfully abject slide into second place behind Google.

And:

Those of drier countenance and Android phones will realize quickly that Google is no longer one of the 100 largest companies by market capitalization. It’s now part of Alphabet, so Apple didn’t have to contend with last year’s winner.

It did, though, have to compete with Alphabet, whose self-driving car must have suffered a software malfunction — as it only propelled the company to 21st place.

Of course, this must be mostly down to the idea that many consumers might not have heard of Alphabet at all.

I still find the move to Alphabet confusing. It’s a holding company, but it was named without connection to one of the biggest brands in the world, a brand it was built to contain.

Google’s futuristic new campus

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The Verge:

Google’s grand plans for a futuristic new campus in the North Bayshore district of Mountain View, CA may finally become a reality thanks to a new real estate deal struck with LinkedIn. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the two tech companies came to an agreement on a property swap that puts to rest a longstanding feud over lucrative current and unused square footage in Silicon Valley. Google paid $215 million for the swap, while LinkedIn paid $331 million, the report states.

In a nutshell, Google’s plans for their campus were put on hold last year when the Mountain View city council voted to award a huge tract of land to LinkedIn instead of Google. With the swap, Google now has the property it needs to push forward.

Politics aside, follow the various links to see pictures and video of this planned campus. To me, it’s like a science fiction fantasy. It will be interesting to watch this unfold. Looks like Apple, Facebook and Google will all have their grand palaces.

Meet the people who create the playlists at Apple, Spotify and Google

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Reggie Ugwu, at Buzzfeed, pulled together a fantastic feature, bringing you behind the scenes at Apple Music, Spotify, and Google Play.

When he’s choosing your music for you, Carl Chery, 37, is in Culver City, California, sitting at his desk in an office with no signage, trying to decide whether Drake and Future’s “Jumpman” (jumpman, jumpman, jumpman) has jumped the shark. Or sometimes he’s at home in his one-bedroom apartment on the border of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, walking around in his living room with new Gucci Mane blasting from a Beats Pill. Or at the gym going for a morning run on the treadmill, thinking about your gym and your treadmill, listening through headphones for changes in tempo and tone: Will this song push you through the pain? Is that one too long on the buildup?

I’ve always wondered how they pull these playlists together. This piece answers a lot of questions.

Artificial intelligence, Apple, and Google

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This post by Benedict Evans first digs into the idea of artificial intelligence, then looks at the efforts by Apple and Google to get a sense of who is doing what.

If you have even the slightest interest in artificial intelligence, neural nets, speech recognition, etc., this is worth the read.

Why Tony Fadell left Nest — and Alphabet

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Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

“Tony at Alphabet was paying Google employees at Google rates with Google benefits. He was paying Google rents. This is not what a startup does”

Police are filing warrants for Android’s vast store of location data

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The Verge:

None of the witnesses saw Graham’s face in February, and Graham himself wasn’t talking. He was physically similar to the man who held up the bank in February — but it was only enough to keep the case going, not enough to make it stick.

So investigators tried a new trick: they called Google. In an affidavit filed on February 8th, nearly a year after the initial robbery, the FBI requested location data pulled from Graham’s Samsung Galaxy S5.

Remind you of a certain Police song?