Everything we know Google is working on for the new year

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/google-tracker-2015-everything-google-is-working-on-for-the-new-year/

by sciurus • 12 years ago

141 72 12 years ago

arstechnica.com

acheron• 12 years ago

I've got a crazy guess here: I bet they're working on more ways to show ads.

tracker1• 12 years ago

Given their ad sales model, they're working on ways to serve you ads you're more likely to click on.

rev_bird• 12 years ago

I'm perpetually torn about this -- on the one hand, the way they want to serve relevant ads is by knowing everything about my life, even if I don't want them to. On the other hand, I'll get really relevant ads. That's kind of nice.

brador• 12 years ago

Not just serving ads but finding more ways to trick users into clicking them. Have you seen the late load ad over the number 1 search result they started a few months ago?

jmathes• 12 years ago

We try to show ads that people will click on AND THEN buy/use whatever's on the other end. This maximizes advertiser value, long-term Google profit, and user experience all at once.

So we're trying to show you ads that you want to see, rather than ads that try to provoke you into clicking (like Buzzfeed articles)

passfree2• 12 years ago

It is not about the ads any more. Information is far much more important and they do a fine job at taking over every information stream they can get to. In the long run this will play a huge role.

lnanek2• 12 years ago

Yes, taking over information streams and injecting ads. Ads are where all Google's money comes from to pay for the rest of it all.

ksk• 12 years ago

In the long run this will play a huge role.

Do you have anything particular in mind? :)

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

If Google wants to offer "Whatsapp competition" in 2015, it should have 2 things, that Hangouts doesn't right now:

1) fast (instant) performance

2) end-to-end encryption (I wouldn't mind if they used the same Axolotl protocol as TextSecure and Whatsapp)

If it doesn't have any of those, I won't be using it.

nostromo2• 12 years ago

3) completely independent of Google+

Pxtl2• 12 years ago

I'm still confused why Google+ even exists as a separate component.

I mean, I have a Google account. Why doesn't that just automatically include the Google+ infrastructure? Why do I have to enable a service even if I don't use it?

Pxtl2• 12 years ago

And one thing Whatsapp does have right now:

Support every platform. Not just Android 4 and iOS. You need to go right down to Android 2.3, Windows Phone, Symbian, Blackberry, Nintendo DS, PSP, etc. Even IE6.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

This is why platform/ecosystem giants like Microsoft, Facebook, and Google cannot be, and should not try to be WhatsApp. By the time they get there, the battleground will have shifted out from under them.

stephenr• 12 years ago

The precursor to hangouts (talk) had the best kind of cross platform support: it was an open standard (xmpp) so you didn't need the official Google app to use it.

The major im apps are all built on xmpp base anyway so what's missing is support for any extensions they create and open access for third party clients using standard xmpp protocols

qwertzuiopasd• 12 years ago

3) focus on text instead of video 4) a ux that deserves the name ux 5) minus google+

laxatives• 12 years ago

I've always thought that the Google Ideas projects page was a bit frightening since many of projects are closely tied to defense.

https://www.google.com/ideas/projects/

foobarqux2• 12 years ago

Google Ideas is essentially Google's division to collaborate with the state department.

username223• 12 years ago

Google is another "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." What do you expect?

navytank• 12 years ago

It doesn't seem to be mentioned directly on the Google Ideas site, but it seems to be Jared Cohen's own project [1], which could explain the defense-themed sub-projects. Interestingly, their last public blog post was in late January [2], and there hasn't seemed to be much public press on what they're doing in a few years.

[1] http://www.cfr.org/experts/cybersecurity-iran-technology-and... [2] https://plus.google.com/+GoogleIdeas/posts

patrickk• 12 years ago

Julian Assange has some interesting things to say about Jared Cohen:

Later that year the two co-wrote a policy piece for the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs, praising the reformative potential of Silicon Valley technologies as an instrument of US foreign policy. Describing what they called “coalitions of the connected,” Schmidt and Cohen claimed that

Democratic states that have built coalitions of their militaries have the capacity to do the same with their connection technologies. . . . They offer a new way to exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world.

In the same piece they argued that “this technology is overwhelmingly provided by the private sector.” Shortly afterwards, Tunisia. then Egypt, and then the rest of the Middle East, erupted in revolution.

Of course, you have to take Assange's word with a pinch of salt, but he does a good job of explaining how Cohen links the State Department to Google senior management. So much for "Don't be evil."

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

amelius• 12 years ago

I see no biotech projects. Kind of strange, because it is a hot field, possibly the next big thing.

nostromo2• 12 years ago

There's a whole section on biotech:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/google-tracker-2015-e...

Most interesting to me is Calico:

http://www.calicolabs.com/

xasos• 12 years ago

I'm especially excited for their Google X projects[1] - Google Glass 2, Google X Display, and self-driving cars.

If reports[2] are true that the self-driving car will start testing next month, I predict 2015 may be the year that autonomous vehicles go big. The true goals of Lyft and Uber will finally be accomplished. I hope there won't be much red tape getting these cars into action (although there probably will be).

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/google-tracker-2015-e...

[2] http://www.wired.com/2014/12/google-self-driving-car-prototy...

ams6110• 12 years ago

I think you're at least a decade, more likely two or three, on the optimistic side. But we'll see.

eru2• 12 years ago

Do you think the technological progress will take that long, or do we need the time for the regulation to catch up?

nl2• 12 years ago

I predict 2015 may be the year that autonomous vehicles go big.

I'd be interested to hear what you define "go big" as.

It's going to be years before driverless cars are seen at all regularly outside the areas Google (and others) are testing them in, and at least a decade before they are common enough to start having a real impact on the road. The economics of car buying alone will show you that: eg, how many 5 year-old cars do you see on the road? And it'll be at least 5 years before you can buy a driverless car, right?.

I hope there won't be much red tape getting these cars into action

Really?!?!?!

I had to pass a driving test to be allowed to drive. I hope something similar happens for driverless car implementations. While I'd trust a Google-coded car, I'm not at all sure I'd trust one coded by <insert a company with less experience at building high-reliability machine-learning software>.

lozf• 12 years ago

Self driving cars just have to be safer than Humans -- probably not that difficult.

The annoying part will be entering our destination in to Google Maps Car Interface, and having the car tell us:

"Because we searched for Chairs the other day, we'll be making a quick stop at our Sponsor: Furniture Warehouse to see their fantastic selection, with free delivery... After all your appointment isn't for another 45 mins and traffic is clear... (you may override this action at a cost of ${LostAdRevenue}"

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Ara will be a crappy phone. But it will be potentially important to making Android, and perhaps the underlying Linux portable across a a range of instruction sets and SoC architectures, and, of course, a wide range of peripherals.

bra-ket• 12 years ago

they missed Google Genomics: https://cloud.google.com/genomics/

Everything we know Google is working on for the new year

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