Google wants to become more helpful for everyone – this is the mission that CEO Sundar Pichai issued at Google I/O 2021. For this, the tech group has announced some innovations. These are the three most important findings of the developer conference. Google’s developer conference I/O fared like so many other events last year: It had to be cancelled. That is why Google held the event as an online event this year and made it accessible to any number of viewers free of charge.
“When I drove to our campus in Mountain View this morning, I felt a sense of normalcy for the first time in a long time,” says Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, describing the situation. The pandemic “gave a lot of new perspectives,” Pichai continued. Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has taken on a new meaning.
Over the past year, we have seen the enormous importance technology has in many people’s lives and what they use it for: To stay healthy and safe, to learn and develop, to network – and to help each other through difficult times to help. The group wants to become “even more helpful for everyone” to be “helpful in the crucial moments” to its users. The tech giant from Mountain View, California, has presented various innovations. These are the three most important.
Google Maps Will Receive Five Updates At Google I/O 2021
Less Hard Braking
With the help of maps, Google wants to make road traffic safer and reduce the frequency of heavy braking because heavy braking is one of the triggers for a possible traffic accident, according to an expert study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
With the help of machine learning and navigation data, Maps will calculate several routes in the future. In addition to the arrival time, Maps also analyzes where drivers are likely to brake less hard. If the arrival time is the same or similar, Maps automatically adopts this route. Google assumes that this means that more than 100 million times less severe brakes will be applied, and road traffic will be made safer every year.
Extension Of Live View
In the future, Google will also feed Live View with information about shops and restaurants in the area. With the help of augmented reality, users can access reviews or photos more easily. New street signs are also integrated into Live View, for example, to make navigation easier at intersections that are difficult to see.
More details for road maps
More detailed street maps have been available in some cities since August 2020. Google will roll this out in 50 other cities at the end of 2021. This also includes Berlin, Munich and Paris. Sidewalks, zebra crossings and pedestrian crossings are integrated into maps.
Lively Places At A Glance
For some time now, users on Google Maps have seen peak times – for supermarkets, for example. Google is now expanding this function to entire regions. The busy hotspots or city districts can be viewed directly on the map.
A Card Depending On The Time Of Day
Google Maps is also being adapted for different times of the day. Google wants to show its users more cafes in the morning instead of restaurants. There are more references to local sights and tourist attractions for the weekend trip.
Google Search, Google Photos, Android 12: More Privacy For Users
Privacy and data protection are always an issue for big tech companies. Google also dedicates itself to data protection at its developer conference. Users of the search engine should delete their search history more quickly. With one click, the last 15 minutes of Google searches disappear.
Google Photos gets a password-protected, locked folder if the smartphone is given away, but some pictures should remain secret. Google first rolled out this innovation on its Pixel smartphones. It should also be available on other Android devices in the year.
The new Android 12 operating system also receives an update in terms of privacy. Users can see when apps have accessed the camera, microphone, or location on the privacy dashboard. In the future, Google will integrate an alarm into the password manager if a saved password has been published in the event of a hack or leak.
Google Wants To Answer More Complex Questions Faster
According to Google, it takes an average of eight searches for the search engine to answer a complex question. That should go faster in the future.
The artificial intelligence “Multitask Unified Model” (MUM), which can better understand more complex questions, should help. This is based on a multitasking ability with which MUM can access information “in a completely new way”. Google has trained the AI in 75 languages simultaneously and expects MUM to use search queries.
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