Everything we know Google is working on for the new year(arstechnica.com)
arstechnica.com
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/
75 comments
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>.
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>.
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}"
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}"
It doesn't just have to be safer, it has to be 100% safe, at least until public consciousness has accepted it. Gasoline cars burst into flames quite often, including when involved in a high speed collision. Car fires around here hardly ever make the radio traffic report, let alone nightly news, regional news, or national news. But when a Tesla catches on fire after a high speed collision, it's national news for days, with pundits wondering if electric cars are safe to drive after all. Doesn't matter that the car detected the fire and kept it contained away from the passenger compartment.
Brand new things can rarely get away with being just a little better. They have to be massively, undeniably better, with a lot of money and marketing and pretty faces and charismatic spokespersons in order to overcome public fear and FUD from the existing competitors. Look at Microsoft's commercials: it doesn't matter that the Surface is better than the Macbook Air (as is claimed in the commercial). It's not better enough, and no one at Microsoft is Steve Jobs, so people aren't willing to take the risk. Better isn't good enough, especially when you're telling a person that they're worse than a robot.
Brand new things can rarely get away with being just a little better. They have to be massively, undeniably better, with a lot of money and marketing and pretty faces and charismatic spokespersons in order to overcome public fear and FUD from the existing competitors. Look at Microsoft's commercials: it doesn't matter that the Surface is better than the Macbook Air (as is claimed in the commercial). It's not better enough, and no one at Microsoft is Steve Jobs, so people aren't willing to take the risk. Better isn't good enough, especially when you're telling a person that they're worse than a robot.
Self driving cars just have to be safer than Humans -- probably not that difficult.
Perhaps, on average. But (for example) should someone in the Netherlands trust car trained on US road rules? Or someone in Japan (where they drive on the left hand side of the road) trust software trained in India (where lane discipline is fairly.. loose).
Also, saying a system should be permitted because it kills less than humans seems a bit post-hoc. What happens if a bug is introduced that makes it worse in a specific circumstance?
Licensing seems a good way to deal with this, though I'm interested in alternatives.
Perhaps, on average. But (for example) should someone in the Netherlands trust car trained on US road rules? Or someone in Japan (where they drive on the left hand side of the road) trust software trained in India (where lane discipline is fairly.. loose).
Also, saying a system should be permitted because it kills less than humans seems a bit post-hoc. What happens if a bug is introduced that makes it worse in a specific circumstance?
Licensing seems a good way to deal with this, though I'm interested in alternatives.
> Self driving cars just have to be safer than Humans -- probably not that difficult.
Sadly, this probably is not true.
TERRORISTS are the reason we go through ridiculous security theatre at airports - costig many millions of dollars - when the drive to the airport is very much more risky that flying.
People are not rational about risk. They will drive a car because they thinkthey are safe drivers. Giving up control is tricky.
Sadly, this probably is not true.
TERRORISTS are the reason we go through ridiculous security theatre at airports - costig many millions of dollars - when the drive to the airport is very much more risky that flying.
People are not rational about risk. They will drive a car because they thinkthey are safe drivers. Giving up control is tricky.
Are terrorists driving old fashioned manual control cars into your child's school?! More at 11
I think you're at least a decade, more likely two or three, on the optimistic side. But we'll see.
Do you think the technological progress will take that long, or do we need the time for the regulation to catch up?
Both, also. From a technology perspective, I think a lot of people are greatly underestimating the gap between autonomous vehicles operating under relatively controlled conditions with a human available to take over control within a modest period of time and the general case. I.e., it's easy for me to imagine autonomous cars being possible for highway driving in good weather in the relatively near term. But, unfortunately, I suspect robo-taxis are decades away.
And regulations will be slow to change as well, especially to the degree that autonomous vehicles are seen as toys for rich people. One of the issues will be that, even if they really are statistically safer overall than human-driven cars, they will tend to fail in ways that are different. And you can be sure that those different failures will be highly publicized.
And regulations will be slow to change as well, especially to the degree that autonomous vehicles are seen as toys for rich people. One of the issues will be that, even if they really are statistically safer overall than human-driven cars, they will tend to fail in ways that are different. And you can be sure that those different failures will be highly publicized.
Both. It's clear right now that self driving cars can perform very well in ideal conditions. It is considerably less clear that they perform well in poor conditions. I haven't seen any demos of Google's tech in low visibility / high rain, and demos of other tech that I have seen went poorly.
they missed Google Genomics: https://cloud.google.com/genomics/
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/
https://www.google.com/ideas/projects/
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
[1] http://www.cfr.org/experts/cybersecurity-iran-technology-and... [2] https://plus.google.com/+GoogleIdeas/posts
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/
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/
Google Ideas is essentially Google's division to collaborate with the state department.
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?
I've got a crazy guess here: I bet they're working on more ways to show ads.
Given their ad sales model, they're working on ways to serve you ads you're more likely to click on.
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)
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)
I have a better idea. How about turning the tables and making a service that collects info about advertisers instead of users? Then let users browse your database of companies (and/or the products they're pushing) and actively search for what they went. Filters could be ecological stance of the company, color or style of the product, user reviews, published "expert" reviews, etc. Turn all that data over to the user and let them be in control of what ads they see. Let them spy on advertisers instead of vice-versa. It would also be way cheaper since you don't have to maintain this vast data-collecting network.
You can only search for what you already know about (and want to search for).
I already find tons of stuff I didn't know on Google! More, seriously, advertisers already "target" ads based on such loose parameters as age or location. Let me set my age as a filter if I want to, then you can show me those ads. Pinterest is starting to monetize people browsing semi-aimlessly through pages of tangentially-related items. This could just be a variation on that.
Actually, with Google, advertisers don't target anyone, really. They have a few knobs to tweak, but mostly it's Google that does the targeting, based on much smarter (but not yet smart enough) algorithms.
So, you must correlate advertisers.
But it's hard to design something that can not be gamed. As a user, there's no reason to adopt the more obvious possible solutions, because I wouldn't be able to verify that I'm not being tracked. (What means that I'd adblock it like any other source, and thus there's no reason for the site owner to use this one service.)
But it's hard to design something that can not be gamed. As a user, there's no reason to adopt the more obvious possible solutions, because I wouldn't be able to verify that I'm not being tracked. (What means that I'd adblock it like any other source, and thus there's no reason for the site owner to use this one service.)
Are you implying ads is the only way to know about products and ideas ?
very true-did not think about this-good point
This would work if it did not interrupt G's current revenue stream- not sure how the rates would be set for the advertisers- especially smaller ones who need high target niched key words.
> 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)
Huh, really? Then why aren't you actually doing that?
http://imgur.com/a/KGsQh
Huh, really? Then why aren't you actually doing that?
http://imgur.com/a/KGsQh
Maximized user experience would be no ads.
Not if price is factored in to the user experience. Plus the small amount of value of discovering something you wouldn't have heard of otherwise.
I'm not at all convinced that's true. I pay for Ars Technica because I want them to have money but I don't want to see ads.
Edit: looks like Google might be thinking the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
Edit: looks like Google might be thinking the same https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor
That would be awesome. Google's one of the few players with enough clout and reach to make a micropayments system that might actually work, or at least get enough users to see how it would work in practice and work through some of the theoretical hurdles.
The only ads I ever notice are for things I already have. Everybody pro advertising tells me how good ads are for me. I started using the Internet in 1991 and have yet to see how advertising is good for me. Here are some ways in which ads are bad for me:
- Increased operator bandwidth charges (REAL money)
- Loss of privacy
- Page download performance
- Garish web sites
- Lost time cleaning up after sites
- Being shown ads for products I already own
I would happily give more money than I pay my operator to content providers in exchange for no ads.
- Increased operator bandwidth charges (REAL money)
- Loss of privacy
- Page download performance
- Garish web sites
- Lost time cleaning up after sites
- Being shown ads for products I already own
I would happily give more money than I pay my operator to content providers in exchange for no ads.
There's always the freebie users for every media form - piracy, adblock, etc. As a supplier of such things I can only really hope you'll spread the word to those that do fill my pockets with delicious fractions of a penny and not let it bug me
The rest? Not really my problem - I wouldn't redesign a website to save you time when you're (objectively speaking) worth nothing to me - that's bad business
On paying more - You might (might, I don't believe you) but you'd be in the minority. Having a system that allows you to paypal the site a penny every few months would be infeasible anyway
The rest? Not really my problem - I wouldn't redesign a website to save you time when you're (objectively speaking) worth nothing to me - that's bad business
On paying more - You might (might, I don't believe you) but you'd be in the minority. Having a system that allows you to paypal the site a penny every few months would be infeasible anyway
I would be ecstatic if I could pay $8/mo. for YouTube with no ads. Instead I use AdBlock and no one gets anything.
Agreed, I would pay for an ad free version of the internet.
Unfortunately, as I have to negotiate everywhere and many advertisers act badly or are misleading, I choose the scorched earth option as well.
No ads would mean no Google, which (given Google's market share) I respectfully claim would not be maximized user experience.
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.
I am much more complex than my search history- I find that "relevance" to me can depend on things as diverse as my current mood. I too am torn because I know that increased relevance means I am giving away more and more of myself- I'm pretty sure that G has no limits in this pursuit of "relevance."
I hate this so much -- I'll search for some topic, and start getting ads all over the internet related to that topic. Case in point -- a few weeks ago I clicked on an article regarding "Computer Scientist Barbie", and clicked through the Amazon link. Guess how many Barbie advertisements I'm getting now.
Why are you getting ads ? Install adblock and/or ghostery.
Fewer distractions, fewer cycles going to adware. I don't see ads in search results or gmail, and not a lot of other places either. Noticeably different on a tablet though, where it doesn't run.
At the other extreme is adnauseum, which clicks on every ad link in the background (so you don't have to).
At the other extreme is adnauseum, which clicks on every ad link in the background (so you don't have to).
I don't know about the above commenter, but I have a complex relationship with ads and adblock. I installed it to get around some particularly nauseating behavior of some sites long ago, and largely forgot about it and browsed blissfully unaware of how much it was helping. Then I realized that someone else's Pandora was playing ads, and mine wasn't, it just plays song after song. I felt rather bad about that. This is a well established transactional structure which we are all used to on the radio, songs interspersed with the occasional ad to generate revenue. I feel like I've been stealing from Pandora for a few months now, especially because I've been on the cusp of paying for it for a few months even without the ads.
Visual content with visual ads isn't really that different, except that some sites vastly overshoot the expected norm for the ad-inconvenience to content ratio. I think those few bad-actors are to blame for most the current online ad-climate.
Visual content with visual ads isn't really that different, except that some sites vastly overshoot the expected norm for the ad-inconvenience to content ratio. I think those few bad-actors are to blame for most the current online ad-climate.
Why don't you just pay for Pandora and feel good about yourself? (Interesting enough, they make more money on the ads than on a paid subscriber.)
> Visual content with visual ads isn't really that different, except that some sites vastly overshoot the expected norm for the ad-inconvenience to content ratio. I think those few bad-actors are to blame for most the current online ad-climate.
Yes, convenience is key. Print magazines often have around 50% ads, but they don't bother as much as on a screen.
> Visual content with visual ads isn't really that different, except that some sites vastly overshoot the expected norm for the ad-inconvenience to content ratio. I think those few bad-actors are to blame for most the current online ad-climate.
Yes, convenience is key. Print magazines often have around 50% ads, but they don't bother as much as on a screen.
Thanks for the adnaseum mention, looks like it's still in a pretty early stage but it's exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for (and contemplating coding myself).
If you have an Android tablet, AdBlock runs very well in FireFox for Android.
Firefox for Android supports browser add-ons, including Adblock Plus.
Use browser profiles (default in chrome, add multifox in firefox), and delete all cookies regularly on your default profile.
The limit of "really relevant ads" is automatically emptying your wallet and delivering things you "want". Even if you didn't want them until you saw the ad.
"want" is a superset of "useful/life enhancing" which is itself a superset of "need". We probably know our needs, and getting things we want but don't really help us may not be a good outcome, but discovering things that help us in our lives that we weren't aware of is definitely a good thing. I would like to see more of that.
It's not necessarily a superset of useful or life enhancing; e.g. an alcoholic and alcohol.
The best case for an Ad vendor is if they can convert you into a productoholic, trigger your desire, and then satiate it. "ad mortem", as it were.
Ad vendors don't want the best for you. They want the most profitable for them. When everything is terrible, improved ads could be good for both - they profit from things you were going to buy anyway. At any other time, discerning individual nuances of your life is difficult and intensive, blanket trying to change what you want instead is much cheaper.
The best case for an Ad vendor is if they can convert you into a productoholic, trigger your desire, and then satiate it. "ad mortem", as it were.
Ad vendors don't want the best for you. They want the most profitable for them. When everything is terrible, improved ads could be good for both - they profit from things you were going to buy anyway. At any other time, discerning individual nuances of your life is difficult and intensive, blanket trying to change what you want instead is much cheaper.
> It's not necessarily a superset of useful or life enhancing; e.g. an alcoholic and alcohol.
Sure it is. "Want" is a superset in that it contains useful/life enhancing things as well as other things that are not that.
> The best case for an Ad vendor is if they can convert you into a productoholic, trigger your desire, and then satiate it. "ad mortem", as it were.
The best case for an ad vendor is to maximize profit from you while minimizing negative outcomes to themselves in doing so. Whether that is maximizing profit over the short term or a longer term, and whether some methods produce more negative outcomes for them (such as public displeasure and possible resulting legislation) is really their decision to make, but I don't think a model as simplistic as what you proposed really covers the reality of the situation. I'm sure mine isn't all that much better though.
Sure it is. "Want" is a superset in that it contains useful/life enhancing things as well as other things that are not that.
> The best case for an Ad vendor is if they can convert you into a productoholic, trigger your desire, and then satiate it. "ad mortem", as it were.
The best case for an ad vendor is to maximize profit from you while minimizing negative outcomes to themselves in doing so. Whether that is maximizing profit over the short term or a longer term, and whether some methods produce more negative outcomes for them (such as public displeasure and possible resulting legislation) is really their decision to make, but I don't think a model as simplistic as what you proposed really covers the reality of the situation. I'm sure mine isn't all that much better though.
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?
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.
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.
After a certain point I don't think money matters even for Google. :)
I feel Randall Munroe summed it up the best: http://xkcd.com/792/ :).
I just wish they'd do it for free .
No ads ,no charges.
No ads ,no charges.
>In the long run this will play a huge role.
Do you have anything particular in mind? :)
Do you have anything particular in mind? :)
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
3) focus on text instead of video
4) a ux that deserves the name ux
5) minus google+
3) completely independent of Google+
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?
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?
probably because of the back clash against automatic Google+ account creation.
I see no biotech projects. Kind of strange, because it is a hot field, possibly the next big thing.
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/
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/google-tracker-2015-e...
Most interesting to me is Calico:
http://www.calicolabs.com/
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...