Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 09/30 – The New Pixel Phones, Chromecast and More From Today’s Google Event

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

All the news from the Google Launch Night. Say hello to Google TV. Say hello to a new Chromecast and the new Nest Audio smartspeaker. Say hello to the Pixel 4a 5G and the new Pixel 5. But is this a new pivot to midmarket for the Pixel line, or is it the end of the road? The grand unification of Facebook apps continues. And Rally is an interesting raise that lets you invest in… baseball cards? Sponsors: Liftoff.to Calm.com/techmeme Metalab.co Links: Here’s what the new Chromecast’s Google TV software looks like (The Verge) Google launches Nest Audio speaker, successor to Google Home, available Oct. 5 for $99 (9to5Google) Google's Pixel 5 includes 5G and an ultrawide camera for $699 (Engadget) Facebook introduces cross-app communication between Messenger and Instagram, plus other features (TechCrunch) Microsoft’s Bing Will Have Key Slot on Some New Android Phones (Bloomberg) Rally raises $17M to expand a platform that lets you invest in (but not buy) collectibles (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Wednesday, September 30th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, all the news from the Google Launch Night event.

Say hello to Google TV. Say hello to a new Chromecast and the new Nest Audio Smart Speaker. Say hello to the Pixel 4A5G and the new Pixel 5. But is this a new pivot to midmarket for the pixel line? Or is it the end of the line? The grand unification of Facebook apps continues. And Rally is an interesting raise that lets you, invest in baseball cards. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The Google launch night

event just ended. And if we've all been wondering why they chose to call it launch night, we now know. We were anticipating new pixel phones, of course, but what Google led with and what they seemingly really leaned into and want us to know about was Google TV. In essence, Google is taking a page out of Apple TV and is trying to be a one-stop curated solution. to all of the streaming content that is out there. As Chris Welch at the Verge says, quote, unlike TVs from Sony and set top boxes from Nvidia and other brands that run the traditional version of Android TV,

Google has created a new Google TV layer atop the operating system that completely replaces the old home screen experience. Instead of letting you customize the home screen, Android TV gives up some apps. Android TV gives some apps like Netflix and YouTube, their own dedicated rows that you can move around or get rid of, Google TV is all about aggregation. It brings together content from all the streaming services you're subscribed to and lists them all side by side in Netflix like rows of recommendations.

There are dedicated tabs for movies and TV shows, along with a personalized for-you section that mixes them together. You can toggle which apps you pay for and which you don't to influence what content Google pushes on you. But even then, sometimes you'll see items from HBO Max, regardless of whether the service is unchecked. If a recommendation is from an app you're not currently subscribe to, or if a rental or purchase is required to watch it, you'll see a small lock icon next to the title as a visual cue that it'll take more than a couple of clicks to start streaming. You're going to have to pay something, end quote. To feature this new Google TV service, there's a new Chromecast called Chromecast with Google TV, available for order today

for $49.99. So that's less than the Chromecast Ultra. The dongle itself got a slight redesign, YouTube and Netflix buttons are on the remote, although of course Google really wants you to talk to the remote and make use of the built-in Google Assistant. And maybe they'll want you to pair this new Chromecast with the new smart speaker they announced, the new Nest Audio, which is a revamp to the discontinued Google home speaker, which is available October 5th for 99 bucks. This is a major redesign, quoting 9 to 5 Google. Just as we saw in Google's teaser way back in July, the Nest audio takes. on a pillow shape which should help it blend in well in almost any home. And to better suit it to your personal design taste, the speaker is available in a variety of colors including chalk, charcoal, and a green that matches the pixel 5.

Like the Home Mini, Nest Mini, NEST Mini, and NEST Wi-Fi speakers before it, the new NEST audio supports touch controls for adjusting volume and more. The top left and top right corners handle volume up and down, respectively, while the space in between acts as a large play slash pause button. Around back, you'll find a physical mute switch for the microphone along with a barrel jack for the power. As for the actual audio of Nest audio, the smart speakers built-in tweeter and Wolfer should offer an impressive experience closer to the larger Home Macs speaker than the previous mid-range Google Home offering. And as always, you can double down with a second Nest audio and pair them to get proper

stereo sound into your room, end quote. After that, Google finally got to the phones. As expected, the pixel has its 5G entrant, the pixel 4A5G with a 6.4.4.5G with a 6. 2-inch display, 6 gigabytes of RAM, 128 gigabytes of storage, Qualcomm's 765G chip set, and 18-watt USBC fast charging, all for $499. So I mean, getting into the 5G game at only $499, that's pretty compelling. Though maybe you'll want to step up just a bit to the Pixel 5, which was also announced today with a 6-inch 90-hertz OLED display, an ultra-wide rear-facing camera instead of a zoom lens and a fingerprint sensor on the back. It is available starting at $699.

It is also coming October 15th. And of course, it has 5G as well. It's got reverse wireless charging, so you can charge pixel buds on the phone itself. It's got 8 gigabytes of RAM. It's got water resistance. It's got what Google calls an extreme battery saver mode that they say lets you increase battery life to 48 hours.

Both the Pixel 4A5G and Pixel 5G, will have the same front and rear camera system, but that means both have what Google is calling a serious upgrade to HDR Plus and also making use of that new ultra-wide instead of telephoto lens. Some other bells and whistles for the pixel phones. There's a new hold-for-me feature,

which will have Google Assistant wait on hold for you and alert you when someone's actually there to start talking to you. And of course, Google wants you to know that you can use Stadia with these new phones. If you buy either the Pixel 5 or 4A5G, you'll get three months of Stadia Pro, YouTube premium, and 100 gigabytes of Google One storage. But if you were looking for Google to blow the roof off the place with specs, these phones are not that,

quoting and gadget. As for the internals, Google isn't putting the latest and greatest processor inside the Pixel 5. As suspected, the company is cutting a corner here, likely in the name of affordability. The internal processor is a Snapdragon 765G, and the Pixel 5 has 8 gigabytes of RAM. Those specs are more modest than you'll find on the latest Samsung flagship, but given how well the Pixel 4A runs on even more modest hardware, we're really hoping the 5G should be similarly speedy, end quote. Let's just be clear about what everything I've just told you about probably represents.

The pixel lineup was originally conceived of as Google's attempt at a, flagship smartphone. They wanted to go toe to toe with the best that Apple and Samsung could produce. But the project also had the added benefit of acting as a sort of leader and shamer to the rest of the Android ecosystem. By releasing the platonic ideal of what an Android experience should be every year, the idea was that pixels would help guide the overall ecosystem. Now, clearly, Google is taking the pixel down market, or more accurately, mid-market, which is fine. I mean, you could find success by creating the best possible phone in the $6 to $800 range. Certainly that would be enticing to plenty of folks in a $1,000 plus smartphone market. But this means that Google has abandoned

the original raison d'etra of the whole pixel project. Major personnel have left the pixel project. Niki Asia was reporting this morning that sources told them that Google is only planning to produce 800,000 pixel-5 handsets, thereby taking total production of the full lineup, the Pixel 4A, 4A5G, and 5, to merely 3 million units, a drop in the bucket compared to other smartphones. If now Pixel is just a middle-of-the-road project, neither pushing the envelope or ambitiously trying to lead by example, one wonders what the point of the Pixel phone project is at all. I still maintain that the pixels are the best Android phones money can buy, and we'll have to see what the reviews say. This could end up being the best value in smartphone history,

and maybe even kick off a robust new segment of the market. But if not, one really has to wonder, as lots of folks have been doing lately, if this might be the last pixel event will ever cover. Lord knows, Google has a tendency to get bored of and abandon projects. Facebook continues its recent efforts to enmesh all of its apps into essentially one single platform just with different flavors, whether this is a logical streamlining or an attempt to make divestment of any individual property that Facebook owns impractical is, of course, a debate for another time. But we have another

example today of Facebook trying to make it all just one service. Facebook has unveiled cross-app messaging and communication between Messenger and Instagram. And basically, this will work even if an Instagram user doesn't have a Facebook account or vice versa, coding TechCrunch. On Instagram users will be presented with an option to update to a messaging experience that offers the ability to change your chat color, react with an emoji, watch videos together, set messages to disappear and more. As a part of this update, they'll also have the option to chat with friends who use Facebook. The app will inform them. The broad set of more fun additions to the Instagram inbox will serve as a way to entice users to agree to

the upgrade. This decision in turn locks users further inside the Facebook universe. With cross-platform messaging interoperability, users may see fewer reasons to try to a different chat app as one messaging app can reach friends and family across two of the world's largest social networks. In time, Facebook plans to fold WhatsApp into the Experience 2 in a further consolidation of its market power. Though many users may choose to update for the fun enhancements, Facebook notes they can then opt out of being reachable across platforms using new privacy controls after the fact. Through an expanded set of privacy tools, users can specify who can reach their main chats list, who is sent to the message request folder, and who can't reach

them at all? If an Instagram user doesn't want to hear from anyone on Facebook, they can turn this feature off, end quote. Giving users a choice and the option to opt out, as opposed to just forcing people to do what you want them to do, that's not the Facebook we know, right? But then, maybe they'll get to that eventually, because unification is clearly in the wind. Facebook also introduced Account Center, a tool for managing the growing... number of settings across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. It's found in the settings section of each of these apps, quoting TechCrunch again. In the new settings area, you'll also be able to make adjustments to how your stories post, for instance, whether you want your stories to publish to

Facebook and Instagram at the same time. Though not available at launch, Facebook said it will add Facebook pay to the account center later this year as well. In the U.S., you'll then be able to enter your payment information in one place and use it across both Facebook and Instagram, you make purchases, like in the new Facebook and Instagram shops or when you make donations. Facebook says users who choose to use Account Center won't have to publicly use the same identity across all of Facebook. You could, for instance, continue to use a personal profile on Facebook while using Instagram to promote your business or hobbies. But the feature will likely be more useful for those who do maintain the same identity across platforms as you can do things like

sync your profile photo across apps, end quote. Real quick follow up to something we've talked. about before, remember how EU regulators forced Google to offer other competing search options preloaded on Android phones? Google acquiesced by saying, sure, we'll do that, but we're going to hold an auction to determine who those alternative search engines end up being. And it turns out that largely it's going to be Microsoft Bing, because Bing was the winner and will appear as the main alternative download prompt on new Android phones in Germany, the UK, and France. But there were others who snagged places as well, quoting Bloomberg. Google announced

the results of its October through December auction on Tuesday, showing info.com won slots on a choice screen for new Android phones in all 31 countries. Privacy wall won slots in 22 countries, GMX in 16 countries, and Bing in 13 countries. Duck, Duck Go won just eight slots in smaller markets down from a slot in each country in the last period, end quote. Let's end today with an interesting raise. Rally has raised $17 million for its service that lets users list and invest in, but crucially not buy, all manner of collectibles. Quoting TechCrunch. Rally got its start in 2017 with a focus on classic cars. Its full name is Rally Road. Since then, it has expanded beyond that to a wider set of categories including wine, sports

memorabilia, comic books, watches, and more, with the average investment per user hovering at around $300 per offering. New York-based rally, which has built a platform for owners to list rare collectibles and for others to take investments in them, starting at $1, says users have invested in some 120, quote, IPOs, equivalent to more than $15 million worth of assets, according to the startup. The company says it now has some 200,000 users with transactions growing 195% in the last 12 months. The company said that sports memorabilia has been the most successful and popular category in recent months. Typical items include things like a 1937 Heisman Trophy, value $460,000, and a Mike Trout rookie autograph card, $225,000. A variant of it was the most

expensive baseball card ever sold. But shareholders on the rally platform can take stakes for under $50 per share. Additionally, the new investment in Rally is coming from an interesting group of backers, both strategic and financial. They include Porsche Ventures, the Raptor Group, founded by Jim Pilata, the investor who has owned a number of sports teams, Japanese firm Global Brain, and Alexis O'Hanian, who has been a personal user of Rally for years, end quote. That pixel event was a crisp half an hour, maybe a record for a major tech launch event. I might actually have this published sooner than yesterday's show, although yesterday's show was not my fault. The podcast host we use was down for about an hour.

Anyway, you won't hear this at all unless I stop jabbering on. So talk to you tomorrow.