Google I/O dissected on Reporters' Roundtable
The search company launched new hardware products and a new push into media distribution. It also staged a product pitch during a skydive. Has Google just stolen Apple's thunder?
We're recording this Roundtable on the final day of the Google developers conference, Google I/O. From my perspective as a jaded and grumpy tech journalist, it has been a pretty cool conference. Google launched its own 7-inch Android tablet, a new living room entertainment streaming appliance called the Q, Chrome for Apple's iOS, a competitor to Evite called Google+ Events... and that's just the shipping products. We also saw wing-suit skydivers wearing Google glasses jump out of an airship hovering over Mosone Center and glide to a landing on the convention center roof.
So there's a lot to talk about, and I've got two great guests to run down the important topics that came out of the Google I/O conference:
- In the studio: Stephen Shankland, CNET News senior writer and alpha geek.
- Via Skype: Esther Dyson. Dyson is an investor in Internet startups in the U.S. and elsewhere, on the board of Airship Ventures (the company that took the Google wing-suit jumpers up), and former chair of the Electronic Fronteir Foundation and of ICANN.
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Show notes
[0:00] Topic and guests introduced[2:15] What did Google accomplish at Google I/O?
[5:00] How important are Google's hardware products?
[7:45] Do these new products mean Google is becoming a hardware company?
[9:00] Google glasses: What will this project look like in a few years?
[11:15] Aren't these glasses going to be incredibly disruptive, socially?
[15:00] How does Google move forward in a world where mobile devices blow up the traditional search and advertising models?
[17:30] Why the autonomous car matters so much to Google
[19:20] Is the mobile handset a transitional technology?
[21:00] Google as media powerhouse: How well can it compete with Amazon and Apple?
[23:30] The social sphere: Does Google get social networking, and the way people really want to interact with each other?
[29:00] Google and Apple: Frenemies or what?
[32:00] Esther on Airship Ventures
[34:30] Wrap-up