Company / division: Google
Super Mario Run will be available on Android in March – The Verge (Jan 23, 2017)
Super Mario Run was an iPhone exclusive when it first launched, and as such was featured in Apple’s Fall 2016 keynote. However, that exclusive won’t last forever, and it appears that the game will be coming to Android in March, despite the criticism of the business model and other features of the game. What’s not clear is whether the business model will be the same – while getting people to pay for iPhone games is hard, getting Android users to pay up is much harder still, so I wonder whether the additional investment will be worth it if Nintendo sticks with the $10 unlock model. More broadly, there will be additional games for both iOS and Android later this year, so Nintendo is clearly still committed to its smartphone game strategy. However, we still haven’t seen the symbolically important release by Nintendo of any of its highly popular original games for smartphones, something almost every observer seems to think it should do, but which it chooses for some reason to resist for now. It’s also worth noting that Super Mario Run (though not the next game) is another example of iOS first, Android later – a trend that continues to be one of the biggest hits against Google’s Play Store and Android in general.
via Super Mario Run will be available on Android in March – The Verge
What happened to virtual reality? – Business Insider (Jan 21, 2017)
This piece argues that VR is currently underperforming expectations, and hasn’t panned out the way many of its proponents hoped. In reality (no pun intended), I think most of the companies have been pretty realistic about the prospects for the current generation of VR technology – Facebook in particular has said it doesn’t expect Oculus sales to be material to its overall financial picture, for example. So this is as much about inflated expectations around VR that came from others – observers, proponents, fans – than from the companies themselves. But in some ways that doesn’t matter – the narrative was that VR was finally here and going mainstream, and now it’s becoming that VR is falling short of expectations. The first was misguided, and now the second flows from those misguided expectations rather than from actual performance in the market. VR is still at a very early stage, and though Samsung has sold 5 million mobile VR headsets, it’s mostly still a niche proposition today, limited largely to the hardcore gaming market. It’ll take both technological advances and much more compelling content to appeal to non-gamers.
via What happened to virtual reality? – Business Insider
Key Google executive heads to Uber – CNBC (Jan 20, 2017)
We’re not seeing anywhere near the same hysteria over this move from Google to Uber as we saw around Chris Lattner’s recent move from Apple to Tesla. In fairness, Singhal left Google a while back rather than making a direct switch, but the move is in some ways very similar – a senior engineer working on key products at a pure tech company is moving to a car-centric tech company. No-one seems to think Amit Singhal leaving Google is a sign that things are going wrong there, in contrast to the reaction to Lattner’s departure, which just highlights the power of narratives – Lattner’s departure from Apple taps into a powerful present narrative, while Singhal’s doesn’t. A few years back, when there was a cluster of departures from Google in quick succession, this was a story, but not today – that reflects both overall perceptions of these companies, but also the fact that people often do leave in clusters, often for similar reasons, but not always because they’re unhappy. Often, it’s just that they’ve been there for a long time and want a change of scenery or a new challenge. It’s nice to see this hire being seen in a more rational light. Update: as Recode points out, there are actually two hires here from Google, not just one, which just reinforces the point about narratives above.
via Key Google executive heads to Uber – CNBC
Two Sonos Updates – The Verge / Variety (Jan 20, 2017)
Sonos recently got a new CEO, and he’s been communicating with both staff and reporters. The Verge has a mostly intact copy of his internal email to staff, while Variety has an interview with the main himself. The letter to staff is less revealing, though it suggests some broad strokes of the company’s strategy, while the Variety interview adds more unique insight, such as Sonos’s plans to incorporate Amazon’s Alexa into its speakers, a possible IPO, and plans for more of a retail presence. Sonos is in a fascinating space – it was arguably the big standalone home speaker player before Amazon came along with the Echo, and still has the advantage when it comes to whole home audio. But Echo and Google Home offer a big feature Sonos doesn’t, and I think Spence is smart to plan to incorporate both Alexa and potentially other voice assistants. Sonos would still make a fascinating buy for Apple, which already has its products in most of its stores, but both the Echo/Home and Sonos markets could be threatened by an organic entry by Apple into this combined market too.
via The Verge (CEO letter) and Variety (CEO interview)
Google’s Big Marketing Push Pays Off for its Pixel Phone Over Holiday – Bloomberg (Jan 19, 2017)
This piece is an interesting counterpart to a couple of others I’ve recently linked to – another quoting Wave7 estimates for Pixel sales, and this WSJ analysis from earlier today on how hard Alphabet has been pushing sales of its hardware on Google search, given what this piece says about heavy TV advertising by both Google and Verizon around the Pixel. It’s also worth reading this Verge piece, which takes a much harsher stance on what these sales numbers and the supply shortages mean, though it focuses almost exclusively on the 128GB model. The point is, Pixels are in short supply, and there’s an estimate in this Bloomberg piece of around half a million sales, so this is a very different supply shortage from Apple struggling to meet demand for over 70 million phones per quarter – in other words, this isn’t about hitting up against theoretical maximum capacity for building phones, but about very conservative planning on Google’s part. Half a million isn’t bad, but it’s fairly clear sales could have been a lot higher with better supply. Presumably Google will learn from this experience as it looks to update the Pixel, possibly later this year.
via Google’s Big Marketing Push Pays Off for its Pixel Phone Over Holiday – Bloomberg
Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products – WSJ (Jan 19, 2017)
This is a really fantastic bit of a analysis commissioned by the Wall Street Journal. It found that for 91% of searches relating to top consumer electronics categories, a Google or Nest product was in the top ad slot above the results, and in 43% it had the top two slots. This is Google competing with its own advertisers, and Google apparently was so taken aback by the analysis that it tweaked its strategy when the WSJ spoke to Google about it, and the numbers are now much lower. Google’s hardware push therefore not only puts it in conflict with its OEMs, but also with its biggest customers – advertisers. I’m intrigued to know how other big consumer electronics brands feel about this, but the challenge of course is that they have few alternatives – Google dominates search, and so it also has a dominant position in pitching its own products. There’s a close analogy here to Amazon’s hawking of its hardware on Amazon.com, but competitors know what they’re getting into there to a greater extent.
via Google Uses Its Search Engine to Hawk Its Products – WSJ
Google expressed its displeasure to Huawei re allowing Amazon’s Alexa to be built into its U.S. flagship phone – Amir Efrati (Jan 17, 2017)
Amir is a reporter with The Information, and has done sterling work lately on Alphabet and Google. This little scoop was only released in a tweet rather than expanded on in an article, but it raises a couple of important issues that affect both Amazon and Google. Firstly, Amazon needs to get Alexa onto smartphones if it’s to achieve ubiquity for users, and Android is really the only option for integration. Secondly, Google will put increasing pressure on its OEMs not to install assistants that compete with the Google Assistant, but it hasn’t yet made that assistant broadly available for OEMs to use, while Alexa is freely available. There’s a three-way conflict brewing here between the two giants and Google’s OEM partners, and it probably won’t be pretty for any of them.
Google’s New Stab at Boosting Android Brand in U.S. — The Information (Jan 17, 2017)
Android One has always been an attempt by Google to try to squelch some of the uniqueness of various OEMs’ versions of Android, which is arguably inimical to their interests, given that such customizations are often the main way OEMs can differentiate when running the same underlying OS. I had assumed Google was slowly sunsetting the program given how little it’s talked about it recently, so it’s a bit of a surprise to see it now apparently coming to the US (the main focus so far has been emerging markets). Given the low price point, this can be seen as a combination of Nexus replacement and Google Pixel counterpart – a vanilla Android experience for low-end buyers, with the promise of regular quick updates to the OS. It’s also reminiscent of the strategy Motorola began to pursue towards the end of its time as a Google subsidiary. Of course, the big question is whether any smartphones coming out of this program will get carrier distribution – that makes or breaks phone launches in the US for the most part.
via Google’s New Stab at Boosting Android Brand in U.S. — The Information
App downloads up 15 percent in 2016, revenue up 40 percent thanks to China – TechCrunch (Jan 17, 2017)
Two things are worth noting about all the data presented here: firstly, apps are still growing massively, putting the lie to the idea that native mobile apps are somehow dead, to be replaced by some combination of better web apps, bots, or something else. The number of apps being downloaded is growing rapidly each year rather than stagnating or slowing down. The second point is that there continues to be a massive disparity between usage and spending when it comes to Android and iOS. See the first and fourth charts in this article – the first shows massively more Android apps downloaded than iOS apps, while the fourth shows double the spending on those iOS apps relative to Android. It continues to be far more profitable for developers to make apps for iOS, even with a smaller user base and far fewer apps downloaded. That, in turn, seems likely to reinforce the pattern that the vasty majority of big new apps get launched on iOS first, and Android second (if ever). That continues to be one of Apple’s big ecosystem advantages.
via App downloads up 15 percent in 2016, revenue up 40 percent thanks to China | TechCrunch
First Android Wear 2.0 devices revealed: Google and LG’s Watch Sport and Watch Style – VentureBeat (Jan 17, 2017)
Evan Blass is the Mark Gurman of the Android world – when he reports on a leak, it’s usually pretty reliable and often ends up being very accurate indeed. The watches described in this leak are in keeping with what we’ve already heard from Google itself and other sources, so that lends additional credibility. The context here is that Android Wear has never really taken off – as with VR, the biggest success among the Android vendors hs been Samsung’s, which hasn’t been based on Android at all, and Google needs to ensure that other Android OEMs without their own ecosystems can compete too. So far, that hasn’t worked, and some Android OEMs are giving up on Android Wear for now. However, Google clearly hasn’t given up, and appears to have convinced LG to join it in launching some new watches to showcase Android Wear 2.0. I’m skeptical that this will make any difference – what’s become clear since the Apple Watch launched is that we don’t yet have a great model for smartwatches other than as fitness and health tracking devices, and Android Wear doesn’t seem to have provided very appealing options in that category.
via First Android Wear 2.0 devices revealed: Google and LG’s Watch Sport and Watch Style – VentureBeat
Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things – Digital Trends (Jan 16, 2017)
One of the main motivations behind Amazon’s Echo and Alexa strategy has obviously been to drive e-commerce purchases through Amazon, and it looks like Google’s Assistant in its various guises may get the closest equivalent Google can offer – the ability to make purchases on third party sites and services. Payments integration is critical for reducing friction around online purchases, but of course it’s a double-edged sword too – making legitimate payments possible also enables illegitimate or accident purchases, as recent news stories surrounding Echo demonstrate. And of course security will be critical. With no equivalent to the secure enclaves and other technology used in smartphone payment systems, and given that Google Home doesn’t currently authenticate the user in any way, you have to wonder whether this will have to be a smartphone-only play.
via Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things | Digital Trends
Pixel ‘demand is exceeding supply’ at Verizon stores: Wave7 – FierceWireless (Jan 16, 2017)
I’ve spoken to Jeff Moore, the head of Wave7 Research, multiple times, and he’s very good at what he does, so I trust these numbers in general terms. As usual with supply shortages, there’s the question of whether the crunch is coming on the demand or supply side – in this case, it seems likely that Google was simply very cautious in its planning here and has an unexpected hit on its hands with demand it now can’t quickly fulfill. I like Google’s new hardware – both the Pixel and Home are good devices that do their jobs well, and the Daydream is also a much more user friendly version of the mobile VR concept than the Samsung Gear VR, so I expect these products to do well, though the Pixel in particular will be hamstrung by not just these supply shortages but its lack of carrier distribution beyond Verizon. Look for signs of strong sales in Alphabet’s earnings soon too.
via Pixel ‘demand is exceeding supply’ at Verizon stores: Wave7 | FierceWireless
Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider (Jan 14, 2017)
We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming months, accelerated by Alexa’s amazing performance at CES this year. But as I’ve argued previously, Amazon is only “ahead” in voice if you look at the category very narrowly – Echo is one endpoint for Alexa, and really the only one Amazon has with any meaningful numbers behind it, while Siri, Google’s various assistants, and Cortana each have many more users by virtue of much larger installed bases of devices. Amazon is only ahead if you narrow the market to home-based voice speakers, though it definitely is there. The big question remains whether Amazon can get into devices that leave the home in meaningful numbers, and whether the experience will be any good on smaller devices like phones. Meanwhile, it continues to be much easier for the major competitors to add a home speaker to their device portfolios (as Google has already done) than for Amazon to get out of the home.
via Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider
China Orders Registration of App Stores – NYTimes (Jan 14, 2017)
In and of itself, this new move by the Chinese government can be seen as relatively innocuous – the regulation is vague, and ostensibly motivated by policing the plethora of alternative app stores that exists in a market where the official Google Play store is unavailable. However, in the context of the recent request to remove the NY Times app from the App Store in China, this definitely has more sinister undertones. Having policed the web for years, China now appears to be trying to find ways to police the app stores as well, as a way to block access to content critical of the regime. This could end up getting very ugly for Apple in particular if it carries on.
via China Orders Registration of App Stores – NYTimes.com
Google RAISR Intelligently Makes Low-Res Images High Quality – PCMag.com (Jan 13, 2017)
This is a great example of the practical benefits of machine learning, which is where the focus should be as companies tout their AI/ML credentials. On-stage demos of new capability at the research level are impressive but ultimately meaningless unless they lead to real-world benefits for end users such as this image processing technique which can reduce file sizes by 75%.
via Google RAISR Intelligently Makes Low-Res Images High Quality – PCMag.com
The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of the world’s most revolutionary phone | VentureBeat (Jan 10, 2017)
This piece is probably hundreds of words more than you want to read on Google’s failed Project Ara modular phone, but there’s some interesting history here nonetheless, and it also fits into at least two narratives: Hardware is Hard, and Alphabet Lacks Focus. This is just the kind of project that almost everyone who had any sense outside of Google (and presumably many inside it too) knew would never work – the kind of “great in theory, lousy in practice” thinking that Google often falls into. Smartphones are tough enough without massively handicapping many of the things people care about most with a modular approach. Google did eventually kill this project in the Ruth Porat era of austerity, but it should arguably never have made it past the YouTube video the story starts with.
via The dream of Ara: Inside the rise and fall of the world’s most revolutionary phone | VentureBeat
Apple, Facebook and Google top Greenpeace’s clean energy report | TechCrunch (Jan 10, 2017)
Apple has invested enormously in its green initiatives under Lisa P Jackson, arguably one of the biggest and most visible changes under Tim Cook, who seems determined to use Apple’s power for good beyond the influence of its products alone, to a much greater extent than Steve Jobs was. For Apple to come out on top of the major tech companies is still quite an achievement, though Google and Facebook also did well. It’s not clear that most consumers care all that much about any of this, but there’s an argument to be made that these companies are seen as leaders in the field, and Greenpeace’s endorsement puts pressure on others to fall in line, which has broader environmental benefits.
via Apple, Facebook and Google top Greenpeace’s clean energy report | TechCrunch
Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times (Jan 6, 2017)
This comes hot on the heels of the Chinese New York Times app story earlier in the week, and there’s a danger of this becoming a trend. Apple and Google both tend to comply with local laws when it comes to this kind of thing, and that’s certainly a reasonable defense. But if oppressive regimes start to use the major app stores as a way to block content they don’t like, Apple and Google are going to find themselves on the receiving end of attacks from lots of civil liberties groups.
via Russia Requires Apple and Google to Remove LinkedIn From Local App Stores – The New York Times
Ford and Toyota Establish SmartDeviceLink Consortium to Accelerate Industry-Driven Standard for In-Vehicle Apps | Ford Media Center (Jan 4, 2017)
This announcement builds on an existing partnership between Ford and Toyota around in-car entertainment systems, and it’s hard to see it as anything but a concerted effort to bypass CarPlay and Android Auto. Ford supports both technologies after being a holdout early on, but Toyota never has. It’s likely that for most of the consortium members those options will be present in addition to their proprietary systems, but it’s clear these carmakers aren’t willing to cede the in-car UI to Apple or Google.
Want a Peek at the Future of Laptops? Check Out Samsung’s New Chromebooks | WIRED (Jan 4, 2017)
There’s a little too much hype in the headline here – this isn’t the future of laptops as much as the present, but as Chromebooks rather than Windows machines. The sort of convertible model Samsung is using here has been growing among Windows PCs for years now. In some ways the more interesting difference is that these laptops are being priced more like mid-range Windows PCs rather than cheap alternatives, as Chromebooks have been in the past. OEMs seem to be banking on Android integration to sell these machines now that price isn’t really a factor anymore.
via CES 2017: First-Look at Samsung’s Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro | WIRED