The second day of Google’s I/O conference is kicking off, and we’re quite certain there’s going to be some major news about both Android and Google TV. As with yesterday’s keynote, the event will be live streamed on YouTube — we can’t embed the stream, but you can watch it right here. I’ll be live blogging the keynote; my notes are below. Note that most quotes will be paraphrased.
Vic Gundotra has taken the stage.
Talking about when he first met Andy Rubin and his skepticism. Andy said we need an open mobile OS. He said there’s a future we don’t want, where one man controls mobile. Shows an album cover for 1984.
Over 60 Android devices so far. Last year we reported we were getting 30K units a day activated. In Feb we announced 60K units today. Our daily activations is now past 100K a day. We are now second in the US in smarphone sales, only to RIM. According to AdMob data we’re first in total web and app usage.
When we launched Google Navigation 6 months ago, we set a milestone for 1 billion miles navigation with Google Navigation. We’ve surpassed that.
There are some who say people don’t use Google search on smartphones. We’ve seen a 5x growth in search in the past two years in all smart phone categories. “People love Google search”. He is taking direct shots at things Steve Jobs has previously said.
We’ve passed 50,000 applications.
Today we’re announcing the release of Android 2.2, Froyo.
What’s in Froyo?
a) Speed
Dalvik VM has been fast, efficient and automatic. But we can do even better. In Fryo we’ve added Just-In-Time compilation 2x-5x application speed boost on existing hardware.
b)New enterprise features. Now Microsoft Exchange friendly — auto-discovery, integration with global address book. Security policies. GAL lookup. Also new APIs for device management.
c) New services for developers. Application data backup API. In the past Android would backup the apps. But your personal data did not. Starting with Froyo we’ll provide a n API that moves that data with the application.
New API cloud/device messaging API. “This is not a push notification API designed to compensate for a lack of functionality like multitasking in the OS” (Zing!). As a dev you can send message to server and do things like collapse similar messages, handle latency. Can do things so a message can trigger Android intent.
Example-If you’re browsing maps on the web. Hit ‘Send to phone’ — instead of sending an SMS, it actually kicks you into the Maps app on the Android device. Send a link from the phone to the device. It opens up the browser, opens right up to the article. Don’t have to open anything else. This looks really powerful.
Announcing: Tethering and portable hotspot (we broke this news last week). Demoing the hotspot. Enable the hotspot, give it a name. Tethering hotspot active.. Now saying “let’s go to a device that doesn’t have that connectivity. How about the iPad”.
Browser: 2x-3x Javascript performance boost. V8 for Android (The JS engine from Chrome is now on Android).
Showing a JS speed demo where Nexus One does laps around iPad browser. “I really wonder if we’ll be able to get that in the App Store. Oh, it’s a web app. How great is that?”
HTML5 and Beyond. Orientation, camera, speech. Wouldn’t it be great if you could access that from the browser. We’re going to show something beyond Froyo. Showed a browser based maps app, where you can rotate the phone and the map rotates (the browser can access the digital compass). Also a Buzz demo that can access camera from the browser.
Showing voice commands (which Android has had for a while). What’s coming next is the ability to analyze human intentions. “Call Fifth Floor Restaurant”. Going to be many more intentions.
Web app -Translate. Microphone in the web app. Voice commands work in it.
Announcing Flash Player 10.1 public beta. AIR Developer Pre-Release. “It turns out that on the Internet, people use Flash. Part of being open means you’re inclusive rather than exclusive.” My daughter picked up her iPad and this is what she saw on Nickelodeon site — and saw a blank orange site. Worked on Android device.
Android Market. We’ve listened carefully. On average we see users are installing more than 40 apps on their device. First new feature. Search apps. Can quickly just search through the apps on your phone. Also improved search so developers can plug into search framework. Can search through data of an app (showing demo using Mint’s app).
Another issue — people want to move apps not just to internal memory but to SD card. We’ve enabled that in a secure way. We’ve enabled this in a secure way. And the user never has to worry about it — it is done automatically (though they can move an app to SD card if they want).
Update All – Today you have to update each up individually. Now you can just hit “Update All”. We’ve gone one step further. Now with user permission and allow automatically updating.
Announcing – Application error reports. Find and fix bugs faster. Now users can submit bug reports. Developers can see entire stack trace of what happened (loud applause — the devs really like this).
Sneak Peek: What’s next for Market?
A new Android Marketplace, accessible from a browser in a PC. Can browse apps look at reviews. Can sign in, can see every Android device you have direct from the browser. Can browse to an App. Now on other system you browse to it, tether to it, download to PC, then sync it. Hit confirm and the app is send over the air to the Android device. (Sound familiar?)
And music. How about some music. Can send music using the internet, OTA. Looks like an Android music store. With over the air music sync. Very cool.
We recently acquired a company called Simplify Media. Lets you at home run a simple piece of software makes all non drm software at home available to Android device. Say you’re on you’re Android device. Make home library available to Android device as a stream. Streaming music from your iTunes library to Android. This is huge.
Advertising
This is our tenth year of advertising, we know a lot about it. We’ve learned if you want a healthy ecosystem of advertising, you need advertisers, and we have hundreds of thousands of it. We’re not new at this game “we’re not working with a handful of partners and charging them a million each to be part of a program” (another Apple zinger). Flexible formats. Advertising needs to be measured. Useful tools (analytics, adwords, adsense, doubleclick). Showing off formats. Announcing new – expandable ad format. Users if at all possible like to stay within the application. Ad expends right out, slides back in. Expandable format available today. Another one. Can be not just display but also rich media (has embedded movie). Another expandable ad. Very popular add format – click to call. Leverage fact that user gives permission to use location. Direct TV wants to make special offer to customers in SF. Click to call. Another ad format – Expandable format. Includes a map and directions and click to call.
Another example. Click on ad, full screen immersive ad. Trailers, multimedia. Tap at bottom can purchase. Ad was served by medialets through doubleclick. That’s openness.
Everyone at conference can sign up at Google.com/mobileads
Now showing Sprint HTC Evo 4G. Google is making this available to everyone here. Loud clapping.
“Thank you for supporting Android. Thank you for supporting openness and choice”.
Now for the next section
Rishi Chandra has taken the stage. I’m going to introduce you to Google TV. “A new platform that we believe will change the future of television”.
$70 billion is annual ad spend in US alone on TV. 4 billion TV users worldwide.
Many people have tried to bring web/TV worlds again. But still pretty limited adoption.
Three reasons/limitations
– They are trying to dumb down/recreate the web. It’s WAP all over again.
-They’re all closed.
-Many solutions make you change between TV/web. People will choose TV, that’s the experience they know.
We believe answer takes the best of both TV and web and bring it into a single experience.
Google TV: “Where TV meets web. Web meets TV”.
Spend less time finding, more time watching content. Control and personalize what you watch. Make your tv content more interesting. More than just a tv.
Demo.
-Turns on TV. We’re watching TV. Can change channel, access DVR, use existing remote to make that happen. Vincent (demoer) is using new remote control. Partners creating optimized controls specifically for Google TV.
First thing you do is you want to find something to watch. Generally you use ‘the guide’. It’s not good for searching, browsing through a lot of channels. What if we rethought navigation of TV. Search box that takes you where you want to go.
And.. after an awkward demo glitch..
Search box takes you where you want to go. Type in MSNBC. see mixed results from TV and web. Tunes you directly to the channel. Now instant access to all favorite channes. How about a show – 30 Rock. You’ll see a future result. If you have a DVR integrated, you can record direct from the search box. Now instant access to all favorite shows. You can do more. Search the entire web.
Run a search for House. See all the content on TV and on the web. House is coming up on USA and Fox. Episodic content. Now we can enable users to have a single experience across both. Can record in future on TV. Or can do it on a site. Clicked on Amazon.com. Goes direct to Amazon’s page. Transition from TV to web is totally seamless. Go to AMazon. Can buy the episode or play the trailer. Homescreen is quick launcher to all content and apps (looks similar to Boxee). Can show Netflix instant queue. Your suggestions.
The web has more content than just favorite TV and shows. There’s been explosion of online TV. YouTube.com — can go directly to YouTube. We can go much further than YouTube. We can allow it to be much more personalized. Example. My son likes Elmo on Sesame street. Sesamestreet has all this content on their site. I can filter than content based on my interested. Can search for just Elmo videos.
Can type in “2010 state of the union”. Can head to the web. Get text. Can click and go direct to Whitehouse.gov and play the video. This is big because I can access the content whenever I want. I am not constrained by thinking in terms of channels and shows.
Can take TV feed, put in Picture in Picture mode. While you’re watching, can pull up the box score while you’re watching the game. Can track what’s happening in the game while also browsing web.
So far we’ve only talked about video. But there’s a whole lot of other entertainment experiences. Music, games, social. Can look at flickr. Watch Flickr slideshow. “My TV just became best photo viewer in the house”.
By bringing the best of what TV has to offer, we can create an experience that is most comprehensive/accessible entertainment experience out there.
Spec – four components. Wifi/ethernet built in. Going to connect existing cable/satellite box to Google TV box using regular HDMI cable. Google TV comes with IR blaster. Also we’ve implemented special IP protocol b/w our box and Dish settop boxes, gives tight integration. That’s how I could do one click recording. Plenty of processing power. Going to be GPU for 2d/3d graphics. Hi def. And surround sound. Google TV input devices — will all include keyboard and pointing device. Can use Android phone. paired with Google TV device over Wifi. Can speak to TV. “Say Good Morning America”. It searched on Google TV. Can have multiple remotes paired. Can be watching something on phone, send that to TV.
This is just the beginning. We’re going to publish IP remote control protocol so devs can build own apps on device of your choice be it PC, smartphone or tablet to enhance experience.
Google TV has three components to stack. First is Android. We are built on 2.1 and will be upgrading. We can do OTA updates. Second is browser. We are Google Chrome. We needed full web compatible browser. And Flash 10.1.
Android portion – Wouldn’t it be cool if I could take favorite mobile app and have it work on TV? Soon you can.
Mobile version of Android Market. Searching for Pandora. Pandora didn’t do anything beyond their normal app, but tiw roks on Google TV. My TV can be much more than a TV. Another cool feature. Taking the mobile version of Android Market.
Brittany Bohnet takes the stage to help demo.
Now from the computer, browsing applications from market. Can install an app to Google TV directly from the Android Market website.
Ambarish Kenghe- Google TV PM.
Talking about how devs can be involved.
YouTube’s Hunter Walk now on stage. YouTube LeanBack – take entire YouTUbe corpus and turn it into experience you can lean back and enjoy. Can see channels, rentals.
Bohnet is back – Google Listen coming to TV.
Can access queue, search, etc. Explore — lets you discover new video podcast.
Can add captions in any language to the TV you’re watching (very cool).
We need help of entire TV ecosystem to push platform forward. Google TV open source will be open source into both Android and Chrome source trees.
How is this coming to market?
Partnered with Sony. Will launch full line of integrated TVs and a Blu Ray player.
Second Logitech – will launch a companion box.
Intel will be powering chipset.
All coming in Fall 2010
Partnered with Dish network for enhanced experience.
Partnered with Best Buy to distribute.
Early 2011 – Android Market, Google TV SDK . Summer 2011 is when it will be open sourced.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt on stage –
20 years ago sat in equivalent of this room and people talked about integrating television guide with TV> 10 years ago WebTV, other companies said maybe we should find a way to integrate way you use TV/web on TV. we’ve been waiting a long time for today.
Bringing out partner CEOs –
Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel
Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony.
Gerald Quindlen – Logitech
Charles Ergen – CEO, Dish Network
Brian Dunn, CEO of Best Buy
Shantanu Narayen – CEO of Adobe
Schmidt – What is so special about Atom processor?
Otellini – It is a version of Atom, bring full processing capability of Intel. Performance of netbook, but put a bunch of specialized circuitry designed for HD video, other things consumers are expected to do. This is one of the things we foresaw when we developed Atom processor.
Schmidt – What is special about Flash/this platform that makes this more interactive?
Narayen – We’re working on Flash 10.1. Taken into account performance, make sure it’s optimized.
Schmidt – Are people going to go out and buy new TVs?
Stringer – When you put all of this into world’s first Internet TV it becomes seamless. The opportunities are just mind boggling. When we launch this in the Fall…
Quindlen – We’ve been innovating in Harmony remote area. We feel the biggest opportunity in the living room is combination of TV content and the web and bringing it together in open platform.
Ergen – Seamless experience is going to be more seamless with Dish than any other video provider. People will still watch Super Bowl, etc.
Schmidt – Brian, as I understand the industry, the profits come at Christmas. How do you see this playing out? Do you see this driving new traffic, new pricepoint?
Dunn- We share your enthusiasm for the fact that we’re a survivor. We have a saying that this is the most important holiday season in the history of the company, and that’s true every year. You’re right, it’s not just a new aisle. It’s a new category — the smart TV. I fortunate enough to get an in-depth demo. When you see what you can do and experience it… “I need one”. Right now I need one. I do think it is going to be broadly accepted. Because it does address how people in an ad hoc fasion enjoy consuming media.
Stringer – You hit the nail on the head. It’s evolutionary. It’s upgradable. It’s active TV. It’s proactive. It’s a very big deal.
Dunn – You can personalize it, it is your experience.
Schmidt – The reason we wanted to make this announcement here is that we need you, the developers to take this platform and do things that we have not yet conceived of. We have the tools, volume, economics, scale. I think to really not just define TV in a new way, but ultimately to define how people entertain themselves.