Google – Page 8 – Tech Narratives

Android is notorious for its poor track record in supporting older devices, but one of the supposed advantages of the old Nexus program and the new Pixel devices was supposed to be solving that issue by removing the carrier and OEM middlemen from the process of OS updates. However, Google has officially stated that the Pixel devices aren’t guaranteed to get further OS updates beyond two years from their launch, while they will receive security patches for another year after that. Given that these are Google’s current and only devices, the idea that someone would buy one today with no guarantee of OS updates after 18 months is a bit much, especially given that average upgrade cycles are lengthening towards three years. Bear in mind, for example, that all iPhones back to the iPhone 5 (now four and a half years old) run iOS 10. For Google to offer such limited upgrade support even on its own devices is baffling and a sign that it’s not yet taking its first party hardware seriously enough. My guess is that these are bare minimum timeframes and that it may end up prolonging support beyond these official dates, but the message it’s sending here isn’t great.

via Android Authority

Android is Hard

★ Alphabet Reports Strong Growth and Profits, Shrugs Off YouTube Boycott (Apr 27, 2017)

Alphabet was the third of the big three tech companies to report earnings today, and one of two (along with Amazon) which saw a very favorable response from the market to better than expected results. Its growth was strong once again off the back of ongoing positive ad revenue trends and a second straight quarter of strong growth in Other revenue in the Google segment, which includes its hardware sales. However, whereas Q4 saw something like $600-700 million in hardware sales, Q1 saw a much smaller bump from hardware – likely around $300 million. Other Bets revenue – mostly from Nest, Fiber, and Verily – continued to grow rapidly (47% year on year) though losses also grew. Google’s traffic acquisition costs continue to rise fairly rapidly due to the increased payments Google has to make for mobile search traffic acquisition (notably on the iPhone) – it rose from 8.5% of revenue from Google’s own sites to 10.4% in one year. Meanwhile, clicks or their equivalents on ads on Google’s own sites continue to rise rapidly, while the cost-per-click continues to fall due to the rise of mobile and video advertising. So far, the former is more than offsetting the latter, and there’s no indication just yet that there’s an end in sight. But Google’s own sites now contribute over 80% of total ad revenue, while third party websites running Google ads are down below 20% and the gap between the two continues to widen as Google continues to be far more successful driving growth on its own sites. That’s a reflection both of a deliberate strategy – Google’s margins on its own sites are much higher – but also of the broader trend away from traditional desktop display ads and towards mobile, search, and native advertising.

via Alphabet

Advertising Sustainability

Google Launches a Closed SDK for Google Assistant on Third Party Hardware (Apr 27, 2017)

One of Amazon’s big advantages in building scale for its Alexa assistant has been its opening of the underlying platform to third party hardware vendors, and the resulting hardware was arguably the big story of CES this year. Google, by contrast, has only opened up its Assistant very slowly to third parties, instead favoring its own hardware for the first six months or so. That’s now starting to change as it not only makes the Assistant available in Android but now also starts opening up an SDK for third party hardware makers, albeit in a fairly closed fashion for now. One thing it’ll want to make sure of is that the resulting hardware meet some minimum standards, something Amazon has done very little to enforce.

via Ars Technica

Amazon is Ahead in Voice

Google Broadens Hate Speech Policies for AdSense (Apr 26, 2017)

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Advertising Sustainability

YouTube Kids Now Has 8 Million Weekly Viewers, Will Expand to Smart TVs (Apr 26, 2017)

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Disrupting TV

★ Google Makes Tweaks to Search to Combat Fake News (Apr 25, 2017)

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Fake News is Real

★ Samsung Uses Google Music as Default Option on Galaxy S8 (Apr 21, 2017)

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Samsung is Bad at Services

Apple Hires Google Satellite Execs, Likely for Mapping or Broadband (Apr 21, 2017)

Google recently got out of the satellite mapping business by selling its Skybox / Terra Bella unit to Planet Labs. That unit had mostly been working on mapping imagery, and Google clearly decided it didn’t need to do that work itself to benefit from the results, and effectively outsourced it. Now two executives from that former team have ended up at Apple, under former Dropcam exec Greg Duffy. Given that Apple has nothing whatsoever to do with satellites today, that raises some interesting questions. While it’s true that Google, Facebook, and others have invested in satellite and other new methods for getting connectivity to remote places, Apple has far less incentive to do so, because its users are typically the kind of well-connected people that can afford premium smartphones and computers, not those in remote emerging markets. And to pursue such a play in a market like the US makes little sense either given how satellite broadband has struggled to compete with wired and wireless services because of limited throughput and high latency (just ask DISH). What makes more sense is some kind of mapping play for better imagery, although even there the same logic that led Google to dump its unit would apply to Apple too. These are certainly intriguing additions to the Apple employee rolls, but I’m not yet convinced that either broadband access or mapping are the explanation here.

via Bloomberg

Apple is Doomed

Google’s Tensor Processing Unit Team Loses Key Members to Startup (Apr 21, 2017)

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Chips

Google is Ahead in AI

★ Ad Standards Consortium Considers Action Against Bad Ads (Apr 21, 2017)

This story puts the recent Google ad blocker story in some useful context. That Google story suggest Google was going to act unilaterally in adding an ad blocker to its Chrome browser to target bad ads, though it would use standards developed by the Coalition for Better Ads as its benchmark. This story suggests the Coalition itself is debating taking a unified stand on bad ads, which would give Google useful cover as a member of a broader group rather than a single company transparently acting in its own interests (especially given that the EU Competition Commissioner has already said she’ll watch what Google does here closely). And as I said in the earlier piece, being part of a group which bans bad ads but allows the ones that generate 90% of its revenue would obviously be good for the top and bottom line at Google. Update: see also this later piece from Bloomberg, which adds some useful additional context and detail.

via AdAge

Advertising Sustainability

★ Google Home Now Recognizes Multiple Users by Voice (Apr 20, 2017)

This has been a long time coming – in fact, in just a few weeks it’ll be a year since Google debuted Home at its I/O developer conference and implied that it would have multi-user support, though of course it was missing when the device actually launched in the fall. And that’s been a big limitation of a device that’s supposed to get to know you as an individual. So the fact that Google Home now recognizes distinct users by voice is a big deal, and an important differentiator over Amazon Echo. I’ve just tried it with my unit and although it set up accounts for me and my daughter without problems the app conked out when I tried to add my wife, so the results are mixed (I suspect it may be because my wife’s account is a Google Apps account). It does recognize the two voices we set up and will now serve us up different responses, which is great. One big limitation, though, is that each user has to have a Google account and has to download the Google Home app onto their phone, which means it won’t recognize little kids who don’t have Google accounts. And given that it’s using voice recognition rather than, say, different trigger phrases, I can’t set up separate personal and work accounts. But for those who can use it, the Home will now be a much more useful device, serving up calendar information, music preferences and so on on an individualized basis rather than trying everyone in a home as the same person.

via Google

Amazon is Ahead in Voice

Google Plans an Ad Blocker it Can Control to Fend Off Ones it Can’t (Apr 19, 2017)

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Advertising Sustainability

YouTube Algorithm Changes Hit Legitimate Creators’ Ad Revenue (Apr 19, 2017)

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Advertising Sustainability

Google Crushes Site Traffic By Scraping Content (Apr 18, 2017)

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Tumblr Launches Social Video App With No Connection to Tumblr (Apr 18, 2017)

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PayPal Partners with Google around Android Pay (Apr 18, 2017)

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Google Forced to Unbundle Services from Android and Open to Search Competitors in Russia (Apr 17, 2017)

The EU is currently taking action against Google over what it sees as anticompetitive practices including bundling of its own services and blocking competing ones from being pre-installed in Android. As such, this Russian case takes on more importance than it might otherwise have, because it presents one possible outcome of the EU case, which is forcing Google to unbundle its own services from Android and allow competing search engines like Yandex to be pre-installed. That’s certainly a possibility in the EU case too, and would mirror the action taken years ago against Microsoft over browsers in Windows. If that were to happen, I’m skeptical many people (or OEMs) would choose alternative search engines on an Android phone, but it would potentially threaten Google’s Android business model, which is entirely about the apps and services it runs on the device (and the advertising they enable). For what it’s worth, as I wrote in this piece at the time the EU action was announced, I still think it’s misguided.

via Bloomberg

Google's Hardware Push