The Vergecast - Spoken like a true snake person

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

This week we have a special Google I/O edition of the Vergecast, guest hosted by Ross Miller, Emily Yoshida, Dan Seifert, and Sam Sheffer. They discuss the announcements out of the keynote, including Now on Tap, Photos, Android M, Cardboard, and the fact that Dan cannot tell his own children apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast Google I.O. special. It is May 28th, 2015. And yeah, just as you notice, I am not Neely Patel. Neelai is in Los Angeles. Deiders and San Francisco cover in Google I.O. And we'll talk about what he's basically reported to us. But joining me instead, as always, is Emily Yoshida. As always. Well, you know, you're here more often than any of us right now. Right now, I am a mainstay. The closest thing we have to a regular now. You've got a pretty good street going here for the Vergecast. That's true.

And also, to my left, Dan Sefer, senior tech editor. Is that right? Yeah, sure. Also, not Eli Patel. Pre-minute Google expert. Yeah, yeah, let's just go with that for today. And, of course, who has not left a seat for months? Sam Schaeffer.

I'm Nealai Patel. How's it going? Her swagisty. Her swagisty. We need to go through and discuss all the ways in which we are the most like and the least like Nelai Patel. Well, I'm lacking any wristwear, so I cannot be Nelai Patel. Yeah, we all, yeah, none of us could ever be Nealai. No, we could just never live up.

We cannot. But, okay, so today's episode is entirely about Google. There's one of the things that have happened in the news this week. We will talk about that next week when Nealai and Dieter return. Today, though, we're going to talk about Google I.O. The keynote just ended about an hour ago to get people a frame of reference. And there was a lot, a lot talked about in two and a half hours, which actually was shorter than most. I think they're usually like three hours in the years past.

Yeah, you know, Google kind of like flip-flops on them. Sometimes they go super long, has these like bladder buster events. And then other times they're like keep it really tight. So this year is kind of in the middle. It was long enough. It was long enough. Let's just say that. And Emily, I'm so sorry.

I asked you to try to watch the Google Eye Conference. It's probably the first developer conference, I think, you've might have seen. No, I mean, what counts as a developer conference? Any time when someone's coding on stage. Oh, well, that just seemed like they were just trying to keep it real. Like, like, I mean, I feel like a lot, there are a lot of things that look like that where you've got somebody wearing a Britney mics, like, parading across the stage and showing you some new things. Like, you know, we saw, you know, lots of that, obviously at CES and like any Apple keynote, something like that. But I thought the coding was a nice touch.

It was like, oh, yeah, this is a nod back to where it all starts. The codes. Tune into my new podcast, you guys. The Codes. where I talk all about coding, the thing I know the most about. I will say, though, it did feel actually somewhat coding. I remember last year, I think, where they actually did create an entire app on stage from scratch. Well, I'll say I appreciate that about it.

Not so much like how the coding works, but I appreciated when they were talking about, like, voice recognition for doing Google searches on like some of the Androidware stuff or something. and just about, you know, kind of breaking down how the apps recognize speech and, you know, spit back an answer for you that's something close to what you wanted. I like that instead of just like, I feel like the Apple approach is usually like, it's magic. Right. Google I.O. is always interesting because like it's a conference for programmers. And that's like an entire Moscone Center, like just thousands of programmers who, if you say API or SDK, they will clap and cheer. And they did. A lot.

It's amazing. When Sundar Peshai came on stage, the house came down. I think someone said copy and paste one time and people just like lost their mind. Right. It was great. Wait, just for the act of copy and pasting? The cleaned up the UI for copy and paste. We'll get at that actually.

I'll get at that right now. It's a key bullet point here. Yes. The copy and paste is better. The improved copy and paste for Android. That's one of many new features for Android M. This is the next version. Yeah.

Dan, actually, can you give like the highlights of what happened with Android M? because this is not like no flagship features. There's a lot of like small improvements, right? Right. So we knew Android M was coming. That was no surprise. Google officially set it on stage. So I guess it makes Android M official.

We don't know the version number. We don't know the name of it yet. Probably won't know until this fall when it's actually fully released. So it's a developer preview right now. And the best way that I can describe Android M is if you are familiar with Mac OS 10, it's like Google Snow Leopard. where they are not really adding a whole ton of new features that you can see and use, but they are going back and making it work better and making it more reliable,

fixing things like copy and paste user interfaces, and adding some better efficiency and stuff like that. But there's not a whole lot to talk about in terms of brand spanking new features. Last year, when it's lollipop, they completely changed the way Android looked, and it was a whole visual type of thing changed. This is a lot on the back end, which is great. great because it makes a better experience when you're using the phone. It doesn't crash.

Maybe it lasts longer on your battery. Isn't as frustrating to use, but it's a little harder to get excited about. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a bad thing, though, because, like, and that's the thing. Most times we see the conference, we're looking for that flagship feature. There's just a lot of good, like, cleaning up shit at this time. And, like, I really am happy for that.

Yeah. You know, one of the big things, it seems like every time Google announces a new version of Android, they say that the battery life is better than the version before. it. I'm pretty sure I've heard them say that since 2009. But they are making that big bullet point this year with Android M. They've got a new feature called Do's, which apparently manages background processes a lot better. So if your device is sitting still for a while, it will have better standby battery life, which is kind of a perennial problem with Android. Even if you don't touch your phone for a day, you can lose half the battery life. And there's like no particular

reason why. So hopefully that's fixed. And it's kind of something that Apple devices, and iOS have always done really good job with, just like not dying while they're sitting on a table. So maybe they've figured it out this time around. Can I zoom out real quick with a maybe dumb question? No, no, no. Please, please do it. Okay. So when you're, it's kind of easy to understand why you have an event like this when you have a new product or something that you're showing people.

Some of this was new products. But when you're doing something like what you're talking about where it's just like making things. work better in a way that's not necessarily something super visual. What's the benefit of being up on stage in front of people who are coders and talking to them about it? Like, why is this, why is this something that's trending on Twitter? You know? I think it's an attention grab. And I think that there's enough interest from the community, the nerds out there that want to tune into this stuff.

And I think Google knows that they can draw attention. And if they do it in the form of event, it's like all of the information is contained in this one ball of an event and it I think makes things easier to consume that's my take. Yeah, I think in so many ways it's like it's the state of the union for Google. You take over everything we have.

It does come down. I think the interest in me is always like how much time of the allot each piece. Right. And so even though it like on surface level there's not a lot of like eye popping features for Android M. I mean it is to them like it's not as it doesn't make as much money as search for them but it is like their big piece.

Yeah. I mean it's it's the it's a piece of software that touches the most number of people around the world. More people use Android devices than anything else. And, you know, like Sam and Ross just said, Google has to say what they're doing with Android. They're doing it in front of a bunch of developers who can now take these new tools and permissions and capabilities and put them into their apps and make their apps work better

and stuff like that. So that kind of makes sense for their event. They can speak to the whole developer community all at once. But, yeah, as far as, like, there was no product announcements at this iOS. and we're going to, I think, get to say that. But, like, there's no walking away from it being like, oh, there's this new cool phone coming. It's just like.

Yeah, I think the shortest answer is they had to say something because they had to say something. Like, it's just tradition for the due to the keynote. And, like, if they don't devote tiny Android to him, that's the weirder part. What about the VR stuff, though? Isn't that new the jump thing? Yeah. So that's one part that I paid attention. Yeah, let's actually, let's go ahead and just jump to VR.

Because actually, that was the most exciting thing for me. Yeah, that seemed like genuinely. stuff. Yeah, VR is like the, like, the VR part of it was, I feel like the most future-looking thing as far as like, oh, there's some other things that are coming soon, but like, so just to go over what they did, they announced this new platform called Jump that supposedly makes it easier for you to build VR videos. They also announced a new version of Google Cardboard that works with bigger phones like

the Nexus 6 and works with the iPhone. So there's VR accessible to more. people and they have this new platform to make VR videos that will go into cardboard. Let's start there. I want to talk about both. I actually want to start with cardboard. And cardboard came out last year, right? This time last year? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Which is, I am so excited about this because to contrast with another story, like, the Oculus Rift guys are like saying, if you want a full Oculus Rift experience, that could cost a $1,500. This is cardboard and a phone you already have. It costs $15. Yeah, basically. It's pretty much the anti-Oculus. It's the anti-Oculus. It's the anti-Oculus.

It's the anti-Ocos, but it actually works surprisingly well. I mean, it's nowhere near the Oculus level experience. I think it's a completely different take on virtual reality than what Oculus is doing. Oculus is doing this super immersive, really in-depth thing that wants to pull you into it and take you away from the world that you're in and keep you there for quite a while, right, to make its value worthwhile. Cardboard is like snackable VR. You hold it up. You hold it up until your arms get tired, which is like two minutes. Right.

And then you move on with the rest of your life. Have you ever held your arms up? Yeah. I don't know why they don't include the strap with those with cardboard. Is it meant? Is it purposely designed so you sort of go in and go out?

I really think so. I don't think any of the content is deep enough to justify strapping in. Like they're all very brief experiences. Yeah, I mean it's like kind of a more immersive version of looking at a photo taken in panorama mode on your phone. Yeah, yeah.

But you can actually see it up close now. Yeah. And, like, you can do some augmented reality stuff with it so that, like, it can overlay on your actual field of view and stuff like that. But none of it is like, like, there's some real basic games, but there's no, uh, whatever, like, real in-depth game. There's no portal for this. No, but I mean, like, it is, it's in such a weird way. It's a gateway drug for virtual reality. Totally.

Because it's like, and I know this is dumb because, like, I was just, it just came out for iPhone today. And so we were playing with it upstairs before we started. Um, and I don't know. Like, I got giddy, like the first time I played Oculus Rift because I didn't have to have anything special for it. It was literally just my phone and a piece of cardboard. Yeah, you still make the stupid VR face when you wear it. Like, you just can't avoid it.

Is that just like an overbite type thing? Oh, no, it's the wonder and awe. It's the wonder and awe or another way to look at. It's like the mouth open because he forgot to close it. Uh-huh. It's a little tiny bit of drool. Yeah. Yeah, so if you get, if the iPhone users who've never used the Android Carber experience,

download it, give it a shot. There's, what is it? You can look at 3D models of, like, statues. Yeah. You can look at Street View. Right. So if you just want to, like, look at a Paris, a Parisian road, you can just do that. You can just play mist in, like, any place in the world.

You really should put mist on this immediately. Yeah. That makes sense. That would be the exciting thing. But yeah, so it's like super cheap and now it's a multi-platform. It's the other big phone platform. So I think, you know, I'm looking for seeing things that are snack size, but also bigger. Yeah.

Well, Google seems to have bigger ambitions for it. They talked a lot about how they want to, you. incorporate it into educational programs so that kids can go to school and go on these virtual field trips without ever leaving the school. Which I don't know if you ask, that sounds really cool, but I remember being a kid and like field trip day was like the best day of the year. So like, I don't know. I guess it's cool if you get to travel across the world. Is it more, does it cost more or less to get cardboard for a bunch of kids or to take them to the zoo? Well, if the zoo is in like Cairo Egypt and they're in like Iowa, then yeah.

It's probably cheaper to just give them smartphones and cardboard. That's a good point. I get excited. I think the internal chat room was a little divided in this one. I am super excited for that. Because I never exactly. My mom's a teacher. And a lot of her students have never left the countryside of just like a South Georgia

little city. They've never even seen Atlanta, which is like the big metropolitan area like 20 miles away. So I would love to see them like do. It's not obviously like the same as actually going to. city, but like, they can actually kind of like slightly immerse themselves into something. Yeah. Like, it's, I mean, it would be really cool to have an educational experience where you are walking along the Great Wall of China or something like that, like something that never you could

have done in a feasible way with a group of elementary schools. Do you think that takes away the curiosity then from some people? Like, I have no idea what it, like, I actually, speaking personally, I have no idea what it feels like to walk on the Great Wall of China, which it's not my. He's not even in my top 20 list of things that I want to do, but I'm curious about it. I'm curious about what it looks like. Do you think that something like this is sort of like an intermediate step in between not having any idea and having been there? Does that change how curious kids are then?

I don't know. I'm taking this conversation there. I'm going to take the optimistic route on this. And I'm going to say this is better than turning the lights off and putting the lights off and putting in the VHS documentary of the Great Wall of China and watching it for an hour. You're going to involve the kids more. They're going to have more excitement about doing it, maybe learn a little bit more, maybe you have a better idea of what the experience is actually like.

And then the kids that have the ability and the fortunate circumstances to go to China and walk on the Great Wall are still going to go do that. But that is also like there is that fear just to take the other approach is like, well, this is good enough. Like I don't need to go the Great Wall of China anymore because I just had the virtual reality goggles. But I think the reality is that most people aren't going to go to the while in China for like whatever reason. Right.

Economic circumstances, you know, time, et cetera. It's on the other side of the world. They don't want to fly. It's not my thing. Yeah. I tried it before I bought it. Not into wonder. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I can definitely, like the educational aspect of this. And also like, I'm wondering what kinds of experiences will be considered. obsolete after something like this. Like something where, oh, I genuinely didn't need to go travel for this. There's nothing added from the physical experience of being there. I hope it makes CES

obsolete. Yeah, no, something like that though. I mean, we have live streams of stuff, right? If you didn't have to walk a little bit of place, if you could just have your live stream and like maybe you could, you could like oh no, this is what's going to be fun when you can like rent somebody who

will walk the floors for you. and have the live stream of what they see. Rent somebody. Suddenly we got to human trafficking. Okay, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try for a segue. Are you guys ready for the segue? Yes.

You know what that guy's going to be wearing? It's going to be wearing that new Google Jump Rig. Oh, yeah. So this is the other thing, the other announcement. God, that was actually a really bad segue. I don't know why I hide that up. No, that's exactly what I was thinking, though. So, yeah.

Thank you for the setup. I just did not take it there. Anyway, so here's the other part of the Google Virtual Reality announcement. it's jump it's plans that you can download yourselves and make your own virtual reality camera rig which may involve 16 cameras of various quality go pro release their own kind of custom model for this it is a spaceship it is a spaceship it just goes around your head it's 16 cameras in a circle kind of like i guess you'd wear it like a crown uh and and and you got 16 gopros and they are constantly recording and then the jump platform uh what that does is takes the footage from those

puts it all together with stitches them together and stuff like that so you don't see the different cuts from each camera and then puts it in a format that you can use with cardboard or whatever other VR system you want to use. Kind of cool. I think that's more of the future thing. I mean, like, because how much is that going to cost?

Like, maybe it's cool for, God, I'm going to say this word, aren't I? Content creators to make great content. What's that? Because like you gotta figure you invest. I don't know. A GoPro is like 400 bucks. So like 16 times 400.

I can get a GoPro for like 130. I only know that because I just looked it up. But not a great GoPro. So maybe, you know, a $2,000 rig is like, you know, not too bad, I guess. Well, this seems like the first real effort to do like do the neuromancer thing where you can, like I'm talking about renting people. I'm all about renting people here. But like, you know, how people would have shows kind of from their point of view that you could tap into. So it's like, I'm going to go live in this person's body, like, at least, or at least through their eyes for a while, which seems like it has all sorts of fun connotations.

But this seems like the first, like, as opposed to just like having a live stream of somebody with like a single GoPro strap to their head, like suddenly being able to have the whole experience or being able to live stream that seems like it opens up a whole world of entertainment. possibilities. A brand new reality genre. It's a brand new way to record. That's all that I can think about is all the reality shows that are going to come out of this. Where my head went and I don't know why it was the presidential state of the

union. Like at what point do we get like a future president to where like or like have around them a rig where you can experience what's like to speak in front of an audience like that? Well like you should have that rig just for when they're doing their normal boring job. Oh yeah. Like total transparency.

No, that would be amazing. The only thing that would make it maybe not a good reality show, I just thought of this, is that if the main character, the protagonist is the person wearing it, like they won't be able to get into that many awesome clubs and exclusive night spots wearing this like carousel around their head. But other than that, it would be kind of cool. I think the first celebrity moment we'll see is like someone at the Oscars will be wearing it. And it's like, look, I'm going to.

down the red carpet. He can see celebrities all around me. It's going to be Ryan Seacrest is going to be involved in it. Oh my God. Well, who is the first celebrity do you think to be like on camera using a selfie stick? Because this is just the next level of that. It's not Seacrest. Carson Daly? Do you imagine just like a bunch of people in Times Square bumping into each other with these giant 16 camera rigs on their heads? Oh my God. They need like look bumper protection on them. Oh my God. No, it'll be like it'll be what's her face from from red carpet from E. Katie Kirk.

No. Hold on a second. Sam, do you think Katie Kirk looks for E? I mean, if that's true, then... Something just came to my mind and I said it. No, you know where Katie Kirk works now? Oh, my gosh. You would actually do this.

She's at Yahoo. Yeah, of course she would do this then. Oh, God. Sam, you were right. My apologies. We were wrong to ever doubt you, Sam. E, Yahoo. Yeah, anyway.

I'm sorry. I took it straight to reality. but that's immediately where I go when it comes to like first person broadcasting of your experiences. I mean, I think the first things we're going to see are people jumping out of planes with it, right? And people like, you know, climbing a mountain with it and all this other stuff. Right. In the same way that like the first films were of like, a train is coming at you. Like, what's the most extreme thing you can think of?

And then we started to do things about feelings. So it'll happen. Virtual reality with feelings. When will the feelings come to VR? Oh, that's when it'll try. truly have arrived as an art form. Like once once you're going through an emotional storyline through somebody else's point of view, that's when it'll have really clicked.

I'm being totally seriously. That'll be amazing. I feel like we started to see a little bit of that. What was the Into the Wild? I think we saw at some festival recently. Yeah, that was a stab at it for sure. I mean, it was definitely interesting that that's what they decided to do was do something around that movie as opposed to any other, you know, blockbuster action thing.

Fox would be putting out that year. But yeah, I think it's still, it gets a little bit lost in translation. I think when you start having something that's less composed, when you start actually having the equivalent of somebody showing you, like doing video blogging, 360 video blogging, then, you know, there's less, I think if it's a little less calculated or something or people are just, and, you know, I'm not going to be one of the people doing this. I'm not going to be broadcasting my experience. but the people who are, you know,

will be opening themselves up in that way. Yeah. What up? Actually, I think this is a good time. We're going to take a, we have to do the quick little mid-roll thing. Do it. Pay the bills.

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our sponsors a shot. And now back to the show. Cool. So that's the virtuality stuff. It really was like the most interesting part of the show, I think. It's the most interesting like future looking thing. But I think there's some stuff that's interesting that you can like use today that we haven't talked about yet. And that's the new photo stuff, which is pretty sweet. Oh yeah, Google Photos, which the only thing I heard when they said that was unlimited storage for all your photos. Yeah, pretty much that's like all you need to know. So like Google is essentially had a photo service that was kind of pretty closely tied into Google Plus and now it is launching a standalone photo service that's broken out of it and it's available

for Android and iPhone and it lets you back up an unlimited number of photos and videos for free. And the photos are limited to 16 megapixels, which covers pretty much every smartphone and a heck of a lot of better cameras. And the video is up to 1080p that you can store for free. Back it up everywhere. Cool when Google lets us just put as much information as we want on their servers. Like all of it. We can give them everything that we possibly make or write or run on our credit cards.

I was going to say, that's so cynical. But then my next thought was there is an algorithm for facial detection where they know who is in everything. There's definitely some creepy stuff. They showed off this algorithm that can, like, identify a person and then identify them, like, all the way back through their entire life. So, like, if you've got kids and you've got, like, hundreds of photos of your kids from the, like, day they were born up until they're, like, whatever they are now, say they're six or seven, Google can figure out them in all the photos. I have to ask. Is this something you are personally experiencing right now?

I haven't used it yet. So I can't say for sure. but like as a dad, it is pretty cool to be able to be like, look at my kid now, look at my kid three years ago. That's not what I thought you were going to say. When they were born. I'm going to say like, which one is that? Yeah, that's the other.

Yeah, which one is that? Oh, Google knows. There we go. I'm just all floated my brain to Google. Can you help me tag my children? All babies look alike. Oh, man. too.

That's not an exaggeration. But, you know, it's like everybody's trying to figure out this Google back or this picture backup service. Like Flickr gives you a whole terabyte, which is pretty much unlimited to a lot of people. One drive gives you a terabyte, I think. Apple gives you like, I don't know, 12 megabytes or something. And that's burn. And Dropbox gives you like 100 megabytes or whatever it is.

but because people are constantly taking all these photos and videos, their phones are getting filled up and they need the place to put them. And people don't really like to pay for stuff. No, I'm still surprised at like how much, for example, like Apple charges for their ICloud service. Yeah. Yeah, I pay a dollar a month for 20 gigabytes for ICloud, but that covers like photos and like all the backup of my iOS devices. It should be a dollar a month for like 100 gigs. It should be dollar.

I mean, yes. It should have cost anything. Economics according to Sam Schaeffer. Yeah. I mean, there's so many competitors offering cheaper prices. And Apple has, what, $150 billion in cash alone? Like, it's cool. They also have completely internal integration.

I think it's like they have iOS integrated into cloud. So that is the most seamless experience accordingly. Right. But I do agree. Like, as soon as I get like, as soon as we get off this cast, I'm going to just download the Google Photos app and get everything off my phone and onto the service. I know it's an invasion of privacy.

I know my entire life is about to be uploaded into their servers in a different way. I mean, yeah, it's totally like, you know, you're handing over more data to Google. But if you're a Gmail user already, if you have a Google account already, you're already giving Google a lot of data. Like, I mean, in order to use Google Photos, you have to have a Google account. So you've already got a Gmail address that's already, you know, seeing what you search and where you go and what you do on the internet. If you use Google Maps to any extent, you know, it knows where you're going and where you've been. So, like, I think that it is a certainly concern for a number of people. I think that the broader mass of people don't care.

Yeah. Whether that's a good thing or not, that's up for debate. But, like, I think, you know, people have kind of come to accept that, you know, that's the tradeoff that you make when you're not paying for something. I just, I understand the concern about, you know, Google having all of our data. but what does it really matter? Does it really matter? Spoken like a true snake person.

We're all going to be dead, right? Everyone uses Gmail. I mean... Oh, I don't care if any. I don't... No, it's just like I saw so many people on Twitter that were like, oh, invasion of privacy or creepy looking at your kids kind of stuff. Like, who cares?

Either don't use it. Like, just don't use it then if it creeps you out. I don't know. There's this weird backlash of like, oh, Google knows everything about you. Apple knows everything about you. Yeah, you choose to use the services. That's like what, yeah. You know what I think is more scary than all that information being at Google's disposal is exactly this.

How little I find myself caring about it. And how little most, like most people I know actually fundamental. Like you care about it in terms of principle. Right. But at the end of the day, it's like, oh, well, I uploaded these photos to Google. and they made a cool gif of like my kid running around and now that's really awesome and I smiled. That could not have said it better.

No, it's like, yeah, I was like, on principle, I want to be private and when I was private at the same time, I'm not taking pictures of anything worth a damn to me. It's like, uh, Google could know I drink. Yeah, like everyone else knows, Ross. Yeah, like everyone drinks, everyone parties, everyone, you know, like, I don't know.

I don't even think it's that. I don't know. It's like no matter what I would have have, I guess unless I was in a very high-risk position, I guess if I was a celebrity or if I was a political person, I would maybe have more to lose by this stuff getting out there. But like, I don't know. I mean, unless I'm totally mistaken,

and there are a bunch of people who are really jockeying for the position of Virgin Entertainment Editor and they will stop at nothing to hack into my cloud account and get anything out of there that's vaguely incriminating. But, I mean, I don't know. even if there was something bad on there, I just don't know what the upshot would be for anybody to care about it. I really hope you didn't just challenge the entire minutes.

I did. I did. I'm just, I had to make it interesting. Okay. I do want to talk about, I just sorry, I was reading through this,

I want to switch gears real quick and talk about Google now on tap. Yes. Because people are getting super excited about this. It's pretty wild. Yeah, so Dan, like explain exactly what's going on here. It's Google now everywhere and then some. Yeah, that's kind of like the best way to put it.

You can like just put your finger on your screen. Google will look at your screen and whatever's on there in terms of like words and pictures and then give you information about them. So it's kind of like if you're familiar with Amazon's X-ray service when you're watching a video on Prime Video, you can pause it and it'll tell you what actors are in the scene and stuff like that. This is now on your phone and it works with everything. So if you are, they gave a couple examples. on stage of like someone said let's go see Tomorrowland tonight or something like that and you push the button and then it recognizes that Tomorrowland is on your screen and then it tells you the IMDB

card and tells you the Rotten Tomatoes rating which I don't think is very high and probably giving you theater time stuff like that like all the stuff that's relevant to like Tomorrowland being a movie top think pieces top top top Tomorrowland think pieces that mentioned George Clooney But yeah, it's like a quicker way. Like right now, if you use an Android phone, you get to Google now by swiping up from the bottom or you use that widget on the home screen and you have to type in something or you have to hit the microphone and tell it something. It's kind of like a passive thing.

This seems to be a little more active, a little less work on your end to help Google know more all about you. Okay. No, it looks pretty cool. It seems pretty neat and handy. That seems way more seem. Like that seems like something where that conversion from like I want to know what something is to I will use this service to have it tell me what it is. That seems like way more seamless than like the amount of times I actually like do a voice search or something or ask like for me it's Siri. I don't have like I don't I don't do the Google Now thing.

But like it's very very it's not that frequent. But if I was able to just like take out the part where you need to type something or say something and it's like, yeah. Yes. I'm going to get really, really lazy. It's also like, it's a great, like a great selling point to do Android versus iOS. Because like, and Google is notoriously good about, like, taking all their apps and services and making work across every platform. Like Google Photos. Yeah, Google is a great example.

Every app I use my iPhone is Google. Yeah. But I like, this is a compelling saying, you want to have Android because across the board, we can now just tell you what you actually need to know no matter what you're looking at. Yeah. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to see if it works. in practice as good as it does in their demo and if it's as useful in real world. It's very, very cool.

I feel like it's one of those things that is going to take time to learn your, you know, routines and methods of living. Possibly. But like the thing is it's, I think what's cool about it and what's like kind of breakthrough about it is that it doesn't really need to know much about you. It just needs to know what's on your screen, right? And then it uses all the data that Google already has.

It's leveraging that they're, they call their knowledge graph or whatever, to figure things out. Like it knows that instead of Tomorrowland, being a word, that word means, it means something that it's a movie. So this is like a layer deeper than Google Now, basically. Is Google Now on steroids? Yeah, it's the next level of Google Now.

Next level. And it's going to know an embarrassing amount about how much I need to look up. Like it's, like, I'm- My Google search history is so embarrassing. I don't know how many times that I've looked up how old Jared Lito is, but it's definitely a lot. Oh, no. My problem is like, if you look at my Google search history, it is defined and then word.

And that list of words is probably like the easiest thing for anybody in the world except me. And I'll look at something and go, I don't know what that means. I have this habit where I just constantly look up the ages of actors as I watch something. I'm like, oh, how old? And then I play this game with my wife and I'm like, well, how old do you think they are? And then she guesses and I'm like, da-da-da-da-and-look it up. And I'm like, oh, you're right. You're obsessed with aging.

It's crazy. I'm such an ageist. I'm such an ageist. Especially when you're watching like school-related shows. Like, if I'm watching like pitch perfect or a high school musical, I'm like, they're nowhere near high school. Yeah. I got to know.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's sort of like, I mean, I guess there are a lot of things that Google does where it like guesses the information you need to know. Like if you open up maps and like you're trying to go to somebody's house or some restaurant that you always go to or something and it remembers that and has it there. Like it takes out that step. Also just recently, it was like this week, Google has now updated the mobile search to literally complete the, give you the answer. answer before you finish typing. Like, for example, you could type in, how old is, and one of the first results is Michael Jordan.

And, like, when I did it, I typed in, like, am I? And it already gave me the answer for how old is Michael Jordan. That's crazy. That doesn't sound like it works, though. If you were going to say, how old is. Well, it's before he hits enter and does a search. Like, it already displays the answer before he's done. Oh, right, yeah.

Based on, like, each letter you type will. It's like, I'm going to let you finish, but I think you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I already know what you want. Yeah. Crazy. Which, yeah, it's impressive. To me, I'll look at them like, oh, God, I am that predictable.

It's like kind of depressing. Well, also, it's not just you, Ross. It's billions of other people that are searching similar queries, and they're able to, like, construct all that data and guess. Like, yes, Ross, you are like these 800,000 other people that search this today. Yeah, that's not okay. Really what it's saying is how we're all the same. And that is our show. Do you guys think that something like X Machina is possible where you can, sorry, spoilers if you haven't seen X Machina yet.

I haven't seen it. Oh, no. Well. No, go ahead. I'm not going to stop me. I mean, she's made from basically the equivalent of Google's data. Yes. Collected data.

Yeah. Can we make an AI from all this stuff? It wouldn't, it would not phase me if that exists already in like some sort of weird Watson form. Google's got to be. Google has to. They own what robot. What's the, what's the, they own DARPA? right now?

Does it... They do not own not yet. Doesn't Google a robotics company? Boston Robotics. Boston Dynamics, whatever it is.

They own a robotics company. I would be willing to bet they're working on some sort of AI. Google's ATAP program, which actually ATAP has a keynote tomorrow and I think

we're going to hear a lot more about what they're working on, but they have X DARPA people there. Yeah. So sorry for the robotics company confusion, but Emily, to your point, yes, I am fully with you on that.

I have another question about robotics while we're wildly on topic. Do you think, well, no, no, it's not a do you think question. How come, so like remember like smarter child, all those sort of like rudimentary, like AI things where you could type things and they would feedback. Bats. And like Eliza. Eliza, you just spent a time on. Oh, yes. Yes.

Yeah. Who's Eliza? It was a shrink. You could tell her what was wrong with you and she would tell. There's like a bot. So so. So it's like SlackBot. Interesting.

Now we have SlackBot. Oh yeah. But does SlackBot talk back to you? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I said SlackBot remind me to get lunch today and it said, okay, I'll remind you in 30 minutes.

And I said thanks. And it's like, you're welcome. But you're. I'm dead serious. But you're asking it to do something. I also stole this idea from another journalist. Like I. I think it was really exciting for a while.

Like when just that base capability to have a back and forth conversation with a with a fake bot thing. It was very exciting like the mid-90s or whatever like early, you know, 80s even. And we haven't seen many of those for a long time. But I have to imagine that they're much better now, right? Like really, really good. Like just the talk back aspect of it. Why are we not getting those right now just to play around with? Like how come there's not some super version of a life?

that I can play right now. I feel like there must be... Cleverbot? Cleverbot was like... Was that like... Wait, was that the same thing as Smarter Child, basically? Or was that the quiz one? Cleverbot is a clever bot.

Speak to an AI with some... I don't know, whatever Google says here. I mean, really what you're asking for is her, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, no, it doesn't need to have a body, just like a chat app. Chat app and your phone. Yeah.

Well, it will keep me from being lonely. What if I were to tell you... True story. What if I tell you that one of our freelancers on the site that works remotely isn't actually human and it's just a sentient journalism, just a news blogging. That would be amazing. It's an AP bot. I mean, we have AP bots that write articles.

That's true. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to take a quick break and do ads. And when we come back, I will tell you who that writer is. More Google. So the next sponsor, and again, of course, thank you so much for sponsoring us. And, you know, we love all our sponsors. The next one is NewsCred. that is N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D dot com slash verge.

And the struggle I had for that means I would never do the spelling B that happened today. Okay, so what news credit is? So here's the big gist. 64% of marketers say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. We produce content all the time, but we're journalists, we can't really cross that line. However, if you are a marketer and you're trying to make really compelling content, I think it's a great idea to do, I think it's fun. This is where NewsCred comes in to kind of help out with that. Through NewsCred, you can license content from over 5,000 leading publishers,

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Yeah, and that's basically, and if you are a marketer, listen to this, and you want to take a look at it, and you also want to support the show, which, of course, we would love you to do. Check it out at newscred.com slash verge. That is N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D dot com slash verge. Back to Google. Back to Google. Thank you. Welcome back. So we've hit 90% of what's been announced in that two and a half hour conference. Google Maps offline, huge. And that's our next one. Thank you for the beautiful transition.

It's cool. It's good. It's awesome. Turn my turn directions on airplane mode. Hell yes. Yeah. There's some janky offloading stuff now. Yes, you have to like download the maps.

It's super annoying. I remember we did this at CES. You could like download the convention center, right? Yeah. On your phone and it was kind of jank. But how are they doing this? Wait, isn't it just like keeping it in your cash? Yeah.

That seems like a no-brainer. Yeah. That seems like they should just be already able to turn on. Exactly. It's one of those things that why didn't they do this five years ago? Right. So Nokia has here maps. You can download like all of New York State and like have that cached and all that stuff.

So this is kind of like a thing to compete against that. But it's funny that Google's pitching it for developing countries for people who have to like care about how much data they use. I mean, it's funny. It's also like super important. And I think I'm glad they're doing that. But there is that weird sense of like, they're getting something really cool and we want it now. Like, why is this trickling the other direction? Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't your phone when you're doing GPS use global positioning system,

a.k.a. satellite. And you still can do this on airplane mode. I'm pretty sure that you can like turn on at least iPhone onto airplane mode and Google Maps or Apple Maps still works to some degree. I had some funky experiences with that when I was in France where I thought I was on airplane mode because I wanted to save my wireless or my data there. And then I was like trying to like I had the map of where I was going cached on the phone already. And then I would close my phone. I'd open it to check to see like if I was just checking to see if the street that I was going by was the one that was where I needed to be not expecting to have a GPS dot there. But then it was there and I was totally an offline mode.

So if you have your Wi-Fi on, it can also triangulate you, even if you're not connected to a Wi-Fi network. But if you're on airplane mode. In theory, if you're on airplane mode with Wi-Fi on, then. It can ping Wi-Fi connections around you and triangulate you. And can it use, I don't know. I'm not sure if it can turn on the GPS radio. Okay. Honestly.

Okay. But case in point, Google Maps offline. Can find you. Cool. Yes. Is this an Android? Is it an Android-only thing? They positioned this for Android on developing countries.

There is that janky offline mode in Apple. So we probably won't be able to download this on iPhone and use Maps offline the way they advertised it. Well, not right now. Right, right. Yeah, I think we just don't know enough about it. You know what's awesome is PDFs of maps. I use that a lot for the subway. printouts of MapQuest.

No, I don't print it out. I just put it on my phone. I put it in books. It's all my documents. I seriously on board with this. Like whenever like if I travel like out of country, like I'm not going on my sim card, the new sim car when I get there. I'm not going to like internet set up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will just screen cap, sorry, screen cap every single Google Maps thing I need before the plane takes on. Totally. Yeah. And that's how I get to where I need to go or at least to the first Wi-Fi hot. Yeah. Just gets you to water. Yes.

Yeah, totally. All right. So we got to talk about two other things. Yes. From Google. And these are kind of like, I'm calling this, like, this feels like this is like the do-over section of I.O for Google. And the first one was a new smart home thing called Project Brillo. Like what you scrub your dishes with?

Like literally what you scrub your dish is. Also, someone tweeted that it means something in some language. I think it means like tipsy in... It means brilliant. Well, Virge means something in some language too. That name would be French, and it would be market penetrator. Don't question it. Wow.

Nicely, don't know. But essentially, so, like, I think it was like 2011 or 2012. They Google announced Android at home, which was supposed to be like this internet of things, connect your home device and stuff. And nothing's really happened with it. They bought Nest and, like, they hadn't really done anything with Nest. So I guess Project Brillo is like their restart of getting into the Internet of Things world, which is kind of like a mess. right now and Google is definitely not the first company to enter it. Samsung has been in it. Intel's got a lot of investment in it, but like there's all these

disparate systems. It's all confusing as heck and it's like people like my job to explain it and I don't really even get it. And like I don't, I get exasperated by it. For the listeners here that heard you say internet of things and I have no idea what it is summarize it in one sentence. And also please note that when he was saying that it was the most amazing little dance in a chair I've ever seen. The Internet of Things is a terrible marketing catch-off phrase to describe all of the things in your house, all the appliances in your house that are now Internet connected. So you have a smart lights, a washing machine that connects to your Wi-Fi and gives you a message when it's done. A slow cooker with Wi-Fi for whatever reason.

Most of it is really dumb stuff that doesn't need to be connected to the Internet. But because it's an early-on thing and like people are, manufacturers are eager to jump on the craze and all. this stuff and everybody thinks the future is making your appliances talk to the internet that you can get anything you want you get you can get a Wi-Fi connected blender I don't know why you'd want this it does exist and I think it's I think people like I grew up watching the Jetsons and that seemed really cool that everything was kind of automated or I just have one device that would like do everything for me and yeah so like the the bigger picture of this before we get back to what Brillo and weave are is like every company out there wants to own the house because

if you own the house that platform that is a big step it's a big market and you can really basically say what appliances you are and are not going to buy and profit from. Apple's got HomeKit. Apple's got HomeKit, which has, I mean, at this point, Apple's done equally nothing with HomeKit as Android did with Android at home. So this is like Android's restart on the internet of things or Google's restart on the internet of things. Hopefully they'll leverage what they're learning from Nest and stuff. Seems they paid $3 billion for them. And then Weave is the other component, which is like, I guess the protocol,

that they talk to each other with. So, yeah, so Brillo is the actual devices. If you're having a Brillo device, that is you're connected and it's device, weave is the common language that Android devices will speak, that Brillow devices will speak. And it's not the internet troll. It's, it's what you do with a basket. Exactly.

And, like, I think, I'm just positive that one. And I think it wasn't really clear, but, like, anyone can use Weave or anyone can, like, tap into Weave. like the code is there. They described it as an open system. They always talk about Android as being open. So I guess it's, if you want to build it into your product, you can do that and you can develop word and stuff like that.

And the advantage for like Android users is that they'll automatically detect when one of these project Brillo and weave things is on a network. So you won't have to set them up as much or do as much work to use the other things, which is kind of a sticking point right now for a lot of people. So maybe it'll make that more seamless. But it's Google Duo. number one. That's true. But like the bigger picture again, like we're talking seven or eight different competing platforms for a category that I don't know a lot of people that are actually

dying to have. Right. Like if you're building a new house now, maybe you want to like, you know, make it really smart and high tech and make, put like Hal 9,000 in it and make it like the Jetsons home. But if you already live in your home or you live in like an apartment or whatever, a lot of the stuff seems kind of all internet thing stuff is like car stuff to me. It's like, just not. I can't even think about like crazy questions to ask about it because I'm like, hmm. Thermostats. I can think that would be useful. Sure. Yeah. I don't know. I'm excited by the idea of it, but I don't even know where to begin fathoming things. Like the idea of, oh, I'll walk into my house and the lights go on. That's kind of cool. Do I want to invest in figuring out

what ecosystem to use and all that? Not necessarily. You really don't. Yeah. It seems like a lot of A lot of setup and work and money. We are in like the birth of this era of companies trying to figure this out, I think. There's Apple's HomeKit, Google. I think Samsung's doing stuff. There's all Zigby, Z waves. Yeah. There's all these protocols.

This seems the most Wild Westy, basically. Yeah. Someone eventually is going to win or there's going to be, you know, competition. But in like 30 years, like you buy a phone or a computer. and it's like a thing to use the internet. I feel like any appliance you buy will have like more, more reason to use the internet. I don't know what that's going to look like yet.

But yeah, like, what is, what is it going to look like in 30 years when your laundry is done? And like, it's going to look like folded clothes. It's going to look like back to the future. And it's going to smell like meadows. Not that that happened in the future. When you're flushing the toilet with your phone,

that's going to be when we've lost. Wow. You know, hey, Amy, the phone's from your watch. I'm already looking at the phone. Yeah, you don't even have to. No, of course it's already on you. I don't want to have to twist around.

It's here. It's a little more hygienic. You just swipe down and then you flush. Toilet flush. No, it's going to be, it's all on your, on the watch, wrist detection. You get up from the toilet, it flushes for you. It's done.

But also they have that already with sensors. Yeah. If you've read this, the New Yorker had a really long profile. on Mark Andreasen, who is one of the top venture capital guys out in the valley and founder of NetScape and stuff. And the author who wrote the article remarked on how high tech his toilet was. It took him a while to figure out how to use it.

Was it a Toto toilet? He did not name the brand. I would assume so. Best toilet. This toilet in the world. Anyway. This is my next toilet from Emily Ishida. Wait, do we have a top shelf on toilets yet?

Top shelf toilet. We don't. It's the upper deck edition. No. You know who supposedly has like the nicest toilet in the world is Ryan Sechrest, actually, to go back to Ryan Sechrest? Everything comes around to Ryan Sechrest. The reason I'm actually, there's the obvious reason to be surprised.

But like also, I didn't think he was in one place long enough to actually appreciate having a toilet like that. No, you didn't think he needed to use the toilet. I just like he's always flying different houses and private jets. Yeah, there's always a point where he's not working. Like is there a point where he's not working where he could actually use a toilet? He like takes a pill that absorbs all the liquid, the excess liquid in his body and like throws it up. He's a fully efficient biological machines.

Biological is a maybe. So that was one of the do-over. So that was due-over number one. That's over one. Do-over number two that we saw today become official and had been rumored for months is Android pay, which is Google's new mobile payment system, not to be confused with. its old mobile payment system that was called Google Wallet. So Android Pay is essentially taking the place of Google Wallet in terms of the, like,

tap-to-pay stuff that you do with your phone. It's actually built on that soft card thing that Google bought that was built by the carriers. And so it's kind of just like a Google-Fied version of that. It's going to be available on all phones. I think it's compatible with all phones that run KitKat or newer. And it will let you tap-to-pay. with your phone. It supports fingerprint authentication. So it sounds a lot like Apple Pay. It's essentially Google's more serious answer to Apple Pay. They say they're working with the banks this time

where they didn't really do that with Google Wallet and Google Wallet had a really hard time getting traction because of that. So it's another mobile payments thing being a show down your throat. It is, but there are things that are interesting about this. I think one of the things that I noticed I was really happy with is like from the get-go there's apps for like it's fully integrated. Like Uber is fully integrated to that. I don't have to put my banking information into these like apps. It just works with the platform.

Right. That's something like if Apple Pay is doing it, I've yet to find an app to do that. There's so like, so for example, like with the Starbucks app, you can reload your card with Apple Pay. Right. So that's kind of like an in app integration. It's a very, if you do like a bullet point of the features of Android pay versus Apple Pay, you're going to see a ton of overlap. And you should.

And like if one introduces one, like I would hope the other one follow suit. Right. Right. I think it's good. I think this will benefit both platforms because now every phone, almost every phone out there, is going to have some kind of payment device. Right. Right. And maybe it'll catch, have more adoption. Apple likes to talk about how much adoption it's had of Apple Pay,

but the reality is I don't think that most people are using mobile payments at all because credit cards and cash are so convenient. I would love to not have a bunch of credit cards or any credit cards in my wallet. like I would just like have an ID to get into a bar in my phone. Yeah. I mean that'd be great and you can have like a wallet case like this, which I use solely to hold train passes. Because, but like,

but that relies on not only that your phone system uses, supports the cards that you use, but also that everywhere you go where you need to spend money will accept that as a form of payment. And we, for a long time, cash was the only thing that was accepted everywhere. where you went, and now we're at a point where pretty much, with a few exceptions, you can use a credit card of some sort.

Not New York City. With few exceptions. Dude, New York City is hype on cash. I am not kidding. I am not kidding. Like half of places I go to, whether that's food places or bars, cash only. And bodegas also, cash only, $10 credit card minimum. It's like, well, they accept credit cards.

Yeah, but they very much prefer cash. I respect cash only, I have to say. Yeah, same. It makes me like pay attention. I very much agree with that too because it's like, oh, cool, just take this piece of plastic and do something with it versus like having the tangible dollar bills in your hand. Or it's like, I mean, the places that accept cards are like big chains. Yeah, like McDonald's. You can go get like a packet of ketchup with a credit card at McDonald's.

They don't give a crack. But, but yeah, I totally feel you. That's also changing. Sorry, yeah, I didn't mean to just derail you. But living in the city is like, it's insane how many places are cash only. So at what point are those places that won't even accept a credit card going to let you pay with your phone? I don't need, I don't know. Unless they want to just like transcend beyond credit card.

Just like Apple Watch only. But the thing is, when you're using a mobile payment system, you're paying with a credit card. Right. It's just connected to a credit card. It's just another way. The idea of like a piece of plastic versus like an NFC chip in your wrist or an NFC chip in your wrist or an NFC chip in you're, it's weird. Again, I think we're in this like weird, weedsy phase of like all these different

payment systems, kind of like what we're doing with. Well, smart homes are way behind on, on this curve. But yeah, like, what does it mean to transact money? You know, all of my friends use Venmo. And Neli and Dieter always crap on Venmo on this Vergecast and they are not here and I'm going to make a statement. Venmo is huge and a lot of people. Can I say I've never used Venmo and I do not have a Venmo account?

I'm with Sam here. It will be 50-50 because I use Venmo every day. Literally, I saw Mad Max. I saw Mad Max last night and there's like a group of people in front of me. Like they bought snacks and someone had Venmo open, ready to pay the friend. Like, Venmo is huge. It's so much easier to split a check when it's like one card. Okay, we'll do the math.

And we'll do Venmo later. Snake people love Venmo. Fair. But to call back to that, like there's a lot of cash-loin places, but there's also a lot of new companies like Square. They're like, you know, you can be a mom and pop shop and just have an, iPad and you can like use credit card then yes it's still expensive for them square like I think it makes sense for if you're a coffee place or something like that but it's still a cost to you right square square doesn't really make any money right no I don't think so they would take take but credit card

companies do and yeah right and then I think there's a there's a fine line also between like a credit card which is something that you are buying and is not your money and you're going to pay the company back that money that you just borrowed by swiping that piece of plastic versus like a debit card. Like, I have a visa card that has a credit line, but it's my actual cash that's in my bank account. And so, like, when I spend that money, it is withdrawing for my account. So, what is the difference between swiping in a machine or me giving you cash or me using Venmo or me using the phone? I don't think there's any real difference. And these places are like, oh, cash only, oh, we accept credit cards. Oh, we have this square machine. But, like, at the end of the

day, I am just giving you money. This is a transaction. You are giving me some. You are giving me something, I am giving you money in return. Well, the difference is, well, the difference is if you're not using cash, there's a middleman in between. And the middleman takes his fee. Well, the middleman being the bank. The processing. Right.

The processing, right. Visa or MasterCard or whatever. So, right. And like, I could use Venmo to do the processing for me, which doesn't cost me anything. Venmo is free to use. They don't take any money from me by using Venmo. The people taking money is...

How do they stay in business? I don't know. I really don't know. your information? Probably. I mean, probably, definitely. I hate to interrupt this. We should move on, though, but...

We'll move on. We'll have a Venmo cast later. I use Chase Quick Pay. I'm old. No, I... I'm not like, I'm not like, I just want to use cash out of spite for this conversation now. Oh, I like cash. Cash reminds me what I'm doing.

Like, what'll do the economy when everybody's paying for things with their risk? Guys, someone just... Yeah. a video of their remote control toilet and DM'd me the link and I am watching a guy who just, there's no nudity in this Instagram, but he is in front of his toilet and he pressed a button and the toilet flushed. It is. Did he do it with his phone? Does he carry around the toilet remote with him?

No, I think he's at home. What happens when the remote battery dies? Is it dedicated toilet remote? No, it looks like a universal remote. Does he lose the remote in the couch cushions and then he can't flush the toilet? drop this. I will drop this in our chat room here. Please do. That's what I came here. I knew that. Thank you. Thank you for sending you this. Okay. So we will, in all the notes for the Vergecast, we will include the toilet flushing link.

I'm going to pay for everything with personal check after this. That's my conclusion. With a fountain pen with a big signature on it. I have a checkbook somewhere. I've lost it. It's somewhere in a box. Okay, so Google I.O. going back on track, what else it was there? There was Android wear. Wait, can I say something? Can I say something, though, like a big, like blanket? Big picture. Yes. Yes. The amount to the degree to which we are getting off topic and the diversity of things we are getting off topic about speaks to how many things Google has its fingers in, right? Oh, yes. We're talking about robots. We're talking about paying for things. We're talking about toilets. Like, all because of one company. Like that, I mean, just, I don't have a judgment on that, but that's just like... Just an observation.

And here's a scary thought. Like, it was a two and a half hour conference that quickly went through a bunch of categories. Yeah. And I was just about to list all the things that Google does that it didn't talk about. Exactly. And I want to hear this list because I don't think they even went through half of their business today. Oh, wow. Right.

So we didn't hear anything about Google Plus. I remember Google Glass? We didn't hear anything about Google Glass. We're going to hear from ATAP tomorrow. They're on the calendar talk. There is another keynote tomorrow. Yeah. So there's another keynote tomorrow.

A-TAP is going to talk about what they do and what they do is like the way of future stuff. So like, but we didn't hear anything about that. We didn't really hear anything about like Chromecast and stuff like that. There was some little very, very brief mentions. It was kind of like a thing like, oh, yes, that's a thing we do type of thing. But it wasn't really any huge new developments other than HBO now coming. Which is a big deal.

It's a deal. It's a deal. It also could have been a press release or a tweet. Right. So there's a whole bunch of things that Google didn't talk about, and they didn't talk about a lot of things that had been rumored this year, we still don't

see Androidware working on iOS. They didn't announce that. Is that going to happen? We don't know. We didn't see Tango yet, which is their crazy Lego phone. Tango. Well, actually, Tango is the

tablet that can, like, see night vision and stuff. Oh, sorry. You're thinking of, you were thinking of Project ARA. Oh, God. Which is, like, another Google thing. shit, okay. That has the modular phone pieces, which is very, very cool.

Oh, yeah, we didn't see any... I'm feeling we're going to see a lot, some of that stuff tomorrow. Okay. Just a hunch. That's a mitching. Because A-Tap is involved. Project Loon, the internet, unplayed. Also that.

But Google tweeted about Loon today. Really? They were just like, one balloon can give internet to the amount of people the size of Rhode Island. It was just a tweet that I saw in my feed, but they made no mention. I mean, did anyone tell Google that Rhode Island's not very, big. Apologies, everyone listened. We didn't hear about that.

We have a very small state. We didn't hear about Android TV, really. Nope. Even though you can buy the NVIDia thing. That was kind of like news that was like tangential to the thing.

So, NVIDia has an Android TV box that supports 4K. You can now buy it. Yeah, so, and oh, there's also Project FI that are wireless carrier. Oh my God. Project FI.

They're a carrier. They're an internet provider. They're nice. also in some states. Yeah, to Emily's point, like, Google is freaking everywhere. And the fact that they can go on stage for two and a half hours, blast their ton of announcements and still not

cover but a fraction of their company is, like, insane. It is insane. So what do we think is coming up tomorrow? Do we have any idea? Well, we know Atap is presenting tomorrow. Okay.

Yesterday, the spotlight stories, the little video thing that you can install on Android phones. No. Yesterday they released it for more Android phones and they released the video by Justin Lynn who, if

you should know this, he directed a bunch of Fast and Furious movies. That's just something you should know. Otherwise, Chris Ziegler will die inside and maybe outside. They said that he was going to be part of that. I don't know exactly what capacity. But in their little teaser, they did that.

But like A-TAP is, the best way to think of A-Tap is and actually A-Tap isn't the only one. because Google also has Google X. So it has two really future-looking things. These are tomorrow's ideas. Okay, so today was grounded. Tomorrow is Wild Future.

Let's hope so. Okay. I like that. So that just about wraps up our Google I.O. Edition of the Vergecast next week. We'll be back to not a focused show. Just more hating on VEMO. Yeah, it'll be a more diverse topical show.

But before we get too far, and there is a podcast you should listen to this week that is not the Vergecast. And it's not what's tech, actually, although you should listen to both. And it's not WTF with Mark Marin. Ow! I don't know.

That was just the first podcast I thought of. It's not Chris Parv. It's not Chris Parv with the Vergecast. I'm not even going to try to do that one. No, I started a new podcast this week with Liz Lapato, the Virge's science editor. It's called Verge ESP, which stands for entertainment and science podcast.

You can grow now. You should very clearly not say ESP podcast. That is redundant. Yeah, it's not, it's like ATM machine. You can't say that. Nice parallel. But yeah, we're studying out as a biweekly podcast. So every other week, our first episode just went up yesterday.

I interviewed the guys who created Halt and Catch Fire, the EMC show, and we're going to be kind of talking about science, art, the intersection of them, and doing a lot of cool interviews with people. in both fields. So it's going to be fun and you should subscribe. I think it's iTunes.com slash verge ESP.

It's not. No, somebody's yelling at me in my ear. What? iTunes.com slash the verge. Or if you go to any podcast supplier of your choice, you can type in Verge.

Listen, whatever you do, wherever you find it, just give it five stars. Okay? Yeah. It is like it will be great. It is great now. Legitimately download it.

Rate it if you like it, five stars. We really appreciate it. It's just an amazing start and we're looking forward to it. Not to mention what's tech with Chris Plant. Of course, this show. Just rate everything we do five stars. And if you do, we'll keep doing more stuff. Big thank you to everyone who joined us today.

Listening. Thank you to Dan. Thank you to Emily and Sam, of course. Big thank you to our sponsors, which are, of course, Dashlane, D-S-H-L-A-N-E dot com slash VergeC get 30% off your password manager, which God knows you need. Thanks to our other sponsor, of course, NewsCred. If you need some business marketing and some creative people to help you, get your business out there.

That is N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D dot com slash verge. Again, thank you so much for supporting our sponsors, which supports us. Nealai and Dieter should be back next week. Hopefully, and if they're not, well, you'll see the missing person's report. I'm just going to interrupt and hype our Virgcast account. Our Snapchat account, it is the real Verge. We Snapchated from inside Google I.O. Today, you should watch that if you're listening to this live.

If you're listening to this before, I don't know, noon on Friday, you should follow us on Snapchat. But you should just follow us on Snapchat anyway. And add us on Periscope. We're just Verge on Periscope. we're pushing hard on those two platforms. I'm at Sam Sheffer on Twitter. Emily is at Emily Oshita. Dan is D.C. Sefert.

Good luck spelling his last name. And Ross is at Ono Roscoe. I think our reader's smart to spell his last name. You can do it. They're good. You guys are great people. You guys are beautiful, wonderful people. And of course, there's a lot of Google news.

If you need to know all of it, you need to know what it all means and get all that analysis and beautiful hot take and reporting, please check out theverge.com. Thanks for listening. Bye. Hi. Everyone seems to be a foodie in Hollywood right now. You said the F word. My name is Greg Moribito. I'm Helen Rosner, and we're the host of the Eater Upsil.

It's the new podcast from your friends at Eater.com. You can listen to it on your phone. While you're walking your dog. You could listen to it in a restaurant. You could totally listen to it in a restaurant. Which would be a kind of cool move, because that is a lot of what the show is all about. Tune in for a new episode of The Eater Upsale every other Monday morning. Boom.

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