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Editor’s note: The 2019 Google Manufacturing Conference recently held a bit boring, and most of the things released at the conference will not be launched in the near future. Why is Google so anxious to release? What kind of medicine did you buy in so many hardware hoists? Well-known technology blogger Ben Thompson analyzed this. The original title is: Google and Ambient Computing

Ben Thompson, a well-known technology blogger: Google and Environment Computing

The most surprising disclosure at the recent 2019 Google Manufacturing Conference (Made by Google 19) was from the opening speech of Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Google Devices and Services:

If you look at all of Google’s products, from search to maps, from Gmail to photos, you’ll find that our mission is to bring you a more useful Google. Develop tools that can help you grow your knowledge, success, health and happiness. Now, when we extend this mission to hardware and services, it means developing products like Pixel phones, wearables, laptops, and Nest devices for home use. All products are carefully and responsibly designed to help you every day without affecting your life.

I don’t know if you caught the point? Obviously, Google has a new mission to bring more useful Google to you. Integrating global information is here!

It needs to be clear that this is definitely a wrong statement, and I am exaggerating. Just five months ago, at the Google I / O conference in May this year, CEO Sundar Pichai reaffirmed the company’s long-standing mission statement at the beginning of the keynote speech, and introduced the “useful” wording used by Osterloh. :

It all starts with our mission to integrate global information so that everyone can access and benefit from it. Today, our mission looks like oneIt’s as meaningful as ever, but the way we implement it is evolving. We are transforming from a company that can help you find the answer to a company that can help you get things done. This morning, we will introduce a lot of products based on user trust and privacy… We hope that our products will work harder to help you in your work, family and life. They all share a common goal: to help you, in the course of the day, no matter how big or small things can help.

So, “Benefit everyone” is Google’s goal, not a mission statement. This may be a subtle difference, but I am grateful for this misstatement: because I look back at Pichai’s comments, we finally understand what it meant to be a boring and self-proclaimed event. It is.

Google’s announcement

Google has released the following products and services:

  • On November 19th, the company will launch the video game streaming service Stadia

  • As a competitor to AirPods, the company’s Pixel Buds will be available in the spring of 2020; however, they didn’t even have a sample for the media to get started

  • Pixelbook Go, the company’s third Chromebook, will begin shipping on October 28

  • The new pricing for Nest Aware, the cloud recording service for Nest devices, was announced; the charging model does not charge a flat fee for the device, but for the family. The new package plan will be launched in early 2020

  • Nest Wifi, Mesh router Google Wifi and Google Home smart speaker mix and match, will start shipping on November 4

  • The new Nest Mini (an alternative to Google Home Mini) will begin shipping on October 22

  • Pixel 4 smartphones with radar chips, new cameras and enhanced Google Assistant features will begin shipping on October 24

The first thing that makes this list stand out is that many of the things released will not be shipped in the near future. The second point is that most of the product’s own advantages are introduced after the introduction of a long Google product development process. As I said, this release is purely boring and self-proclaimed.

HoweverPichai’s clear articulation of the company’s new goals is helpful in understanding the company’s driving force: To “make everyone” Google should be everywhere, which means that companies need to be trusted. So, launching a series of products that cover many of the scenarios you might need Google’s help (whether or not you’re ready to release) is in the context of explaining how Google really helps users maximize their benefits.

Google’s vision

Osterloh refers to this vision as “environmental computing”. From the keynote speech:

In the mobile era, smartphones have changed the world. It’s very useful to have a powerful computer everywhere. But it’s even more useful to be able to wait and feel when you need it. You should listen to me talking to Baratunde about this idea, the computing assistant is by your side – that is, environmental computing. Your device works with the service and the AI, so that whenever you need it, help will come, and the help will change. This technique will be pushed behind the scenes when you don’t need it. Therefore, the center of this system is not the device, but you. This is our vision for environmental computing.

Frankly speaking, in many ways, this is a convincing vision:

First of all, this vision for the future seems to be bigger than the reality of the smartphone we live in. Alternatives such as augmented reality or wearables feel less than it.

  • Secondly, this is a vision that will not compete with smartphones but will take advantage of it. Smartphones are very useful in many ways, and any technology that is directly competitive will be forced to cover countless use cases to replace it. However, environmental computing is just one of several ways to make a smartphone a reality.

  • Third, this is a vision that only Google is suitable for. This is a service company that is motivated to maximize the number of customers serving, regardless of the means (such as equipment), and is leading the way in providing services that contain and accumulate basic information about everyone’s lives.

Please note that I wrote it two weeks ago that Google is in a much better position than Facebook or Amazon. The latter two companies have been hampered by the lack of their own smartphones, and their beachfront in the consumer space (Oculus and Alexa, respectively) is also limited. Facebook’s limitations are specialization, while Amazon’s limitations are geographical. When you turn off your headset or leave home, the environment calculation will disappear, which is notIt is the real environment. Osterloh also pointed this out:

Google Assistant plays a vital role here. It brings everything together and uses the familiar, neutral way to get the help you need. Our users told us that they found the Google Assistant to be very smart, user friendly and reliable, which is really important for environmental technology. Interaction needs to be natural and intuitive. For example: If you want to listen to music, whether it’s in the kitchen, driving, or going shopping with friends, the experience should be the same. No matter what you are doing, you should just be able to play the song name and music name without having to make a phone call, tap the screen or button.

Only companies with a smartphone platform can offer the same experience everywhere. That is to say, only Google and Apple can do, and the latter seems to have never tried the family scene.

Google integration

This explains why Google is still investing in hardware, even though it is a service company. Clayton Christensen explains how to win in new markets in The Innovator’s Answer:

When there is a performance gap (product functionality and reliability are not sufficient to meet customer needs at a specific market level), companies must compete by creating the best products. In such competition, companies that develop products around proprietary, interdependent architectures have a competitive advantage over products that are modular architecture competitors, because the inherent standardization of modularity gives engineers design freedom. Too high and unable to optimize performance.

In order to bridge the performance gap between each new generation of products, competitiveness forces engineers to assemble parts of the system in an increasingly efficient way to get the most out of the available technology. When companies must compete to create the best products, they can’t simply assemble standardized components, because from an engineering perspective, standardization of interfaces (meaning less design freedom) will force them to abandon technology. A viable frontier. When the product is not good enough, the best thing you can give up is that you will be out of date.

Ben Thompson, a well-known technology blogger: Google and Environment Computing

Google’s environmental computing

In the case of environmental computing, “integration” does not mean integrating a single device and its associated software. Instead, the important integration is to integrate all the various devices that exist in every part of your life (family, work, entertainment, and anywhere in the middle) and the services that connect them together. This is all that Google has to offer: no doubt, by next year, the best environmental computing solution will be your home Nest device, Google Pixel in your pocket, Pixel Buds on your ear, and work. Pixelbook.

However, I don’t think this is Google’s long-term goal, nor should it be. Although the company sometimes falls into the trap of prioritizing and differentiating Android with its own services, Google’s fundamental nature of service means that its environmental computing products will use any OEM that wants to participate in the game, even Apple. over you. However, for now, this technology is not good enough, which is why Google itself has to do a lot of work in this area.

Google Challenge

Although Google is in a good position to realize this vision, due to its structural and internal reasons, it is not certain that Google will win.

First of all, customers are more likely not only interested in the concept of environmental computing, but also have the money to buy all the necessary electronic products to make this vision a reality (possibly with the iPhone). Apple is a high-end integrated player in the smartphone, and it is against Christensen, which accounts for the proportion of sustainable in the market. On the other hand, Google is a modular player in smartphones, which means it has the most affordable smartphone products and has the largest market share to date. The challenge for the company is that its modular customer base is unlikely to buy an integrated solution from Google.

Secondly, although Siri may never be able to achieve the reliability and usability of Google Assistant – because Apple is also facing its own internal challenges – but Apple has doubled its bets to increase the cost of switching iPhones. AirPods do better than Pixel Buds because they have been around for 3 years and the growth of Apple Watch is still strong. Both devices (especially when used together) can also provide you with environmental computing capabilities outside of your smartphone (yes, HomePod still can’t find North).

Third, as I mentioned earlier, Google spent a lot of time at the meeting.To illustrate its user-centric approach, there are good reasons for this: its core advertising business is being attacked because it treats users and their data as commodities. This raises the question of whether customers are willing to involve Google in more aspects of their lives. This is an attack point that Apple has proposed and will continue to remind on a regular basis (as I wrote after the I/O conference, Google counterattacks by touting the benefits of having so much data.)

Fourth, Google’s business model has problems. Yes, according to the previous point of view, there are more accurate targeted advertisements in your daily life to bring more data, but environmental computing usually has no advertising position. Google Assistant can only give one result, and if Google wants to keep others’ trust, the best answer is the best search result, not the result of a paid purchase.

Five, to some extent, the aforementioned issues don’t matter, just because Search, Display, and YouTube make too much money, which is why Google is languid in execution. A large part of the product released yesterday will not be ready until next month or next year, because it is only a rounding error for Google’s profit and loss statement, it doesn’t matter. This may seem like a luxury, but in reality, either success or death is one of the biggest advantages a company can have, especially when trying to enter a new market.

Google Culture

One thing that Google can do is to deliver the message: I found that the speech was very boring yesterday, but I only understood what Google was trying to convey when I saw it for the second time.

However, this is not necessarily a surprise. At the beginning of Google, it was achieved by doing better and letting the public discover it. This approach works perfectly: Google Search is better than any other product on the market, and because it’s accessible on the Internet, anyone can access Google anywhere, and the marginal cost is zero.

But when the company has to sell something, it’s not that easy. The top position seems to be out of reach for Google Cloud Platform, and it’s hard to expect Amazon (first) and Microsoft (selling, especially to existing customers). The company is currently trying to catch up with brute force. Google has hired a VP and a large number of sales people from Oracle, but these efforts will run counter to the company’s feeling that it is better to make better things.

In view of the differences between the consumer market and the corporate market, the challenges of environmental computing will be different, but the importance isThe same: To be successful, especially if you want to succeed through its integrated products, Google must do a better job in every aspect of the funnel – from the initial awareness, to educating users, to transforming into distribution channels. Even support. However, there is not much evidence to date that the company has made progress in any of the above areas, and given that Google’s core business is still so strong, it does not have much incentive to do it.

And the vision is like this: it’s easy to make it, it’s hard to express clearly, and it’s hard to make it. However, what really needs to be done is to sell it.

Translator: boxi.