Google execs talk Android 12, privacy, skin health and climate change

Hi, I'm rich never I cover Google for CNET. And before the company's big IO developer conference, I chatted virtually with executives about what's new with the company in 2021 and beyond. Here are some highlights from our conversations. We have billions of search queries on Google every year asking us about common Derm conditions and people wanting help to figure out and they have something and they say what is this that has appeared on my skin. And so we used our AI technology and computer vision expertise to build a tool called dermacyst that's in prototype to help people That are coming to Google and ask that question about what is this skin or hair or nail condition and help them get to a better answer quicker. So derma fest protects your data so your information stays private. This means that you control whether to save, delete or donate your data for research. The data is stored securely encrypted in transit and at rest. And Google does not use this information for advertising. Android 12 has a deep focus on privacy and security. There's a number of exciting features that are coming in this release. The first thing that I'm really excited about is mic and camera toggles in quick settings. We've heard from consumers that occasionally they want to make sure that even if they've granted an app access to their mic and camera that they can turn off the entire mic and camera sensors for the entire operating system for all apps. We made that really easy to do in quick settings. Another thing I'm really excited about. Is a new technology, it's an industry first that we're launching in Android 12 called Android Private Compute Corp. And what this is is an environment on the device where machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence technology can run deeply integrated with the operating system, but completely separated from the network. And where data can be processing it in a private and secure way without information ever leaving the device so consumers can take advantage of those technologies without having to worry about their privacy and security being compromised. Password Manager is our tool that helps people Create remember save and auto-fill passwords, it's already used by more than half a billion people, and this IO we've announced four new password manager enhancements, one is a tool to easily import passwords from other password managers are tools. Two is integrations within both Chrome and Android. So you can more easily manage passwords. Across both sites and apps. Third, is the ability to get automatic alerts. If your passwords on sites and apps. Have been compromised. And be able to then know that you need to take action to go change them. And then finally, a quick fix feature in Chrome on Android. This is something that will let you help you change your passwords with a simple click. So whenever you check your passwords in Chrome finds one that may have been. Compromise on a third party site or app, you'll get a Change Password button surfaced by your assistant. And when you touch that button, Chrome will navigate you to the site and help you go through that process of quickly and easily changing your password. Cool, I tell me about this quick delete feature for search. So the quick delete feature in search is something that we're introducing in response to user feedback. We've heard from people that sometimes they'd like to go back and put themselves in incognito mode after the fact. And so the notion is if you're searching for something, and you think after the fact, I kind of wish that that wasn't saved. In your Google profile picture, you can click on it and with one click, go back and delete the last 15 minutes of your search activity. So very quickly and easily able to go back and scratch that from my record, and to do so in a quick and easy way right in context in the app. [BLANK_AUDIO] And last, tell us about this Locked Folder in Google Photos. Yea. So Google Photos is introducing a new feature called the Locked Folder. The idea here is that you'll be able to add, Photos that you choose to a special passcode protected locked folder. Anything you add to this lock folder will get saved separately, and then they won't show up as you scroll through Google Photos. They won't Don't show up in shared albums. They won't show up in other apps or any other place. And this is a feature that's going to be coming to newer Google pixels first, expanding to more Android devices throughout the year. But we're excited about the ability for users to Put their folder or put their photos in this locked folder and be able to hand their phone to someone and feel confident that their sensitive information whether it's a picture of your passport, whether it's a surprise gift that you're planning for someone in your family will stay safe and visible only to them. Do you want to operate on carbon free energy by 2030 24 hours a day seven days a week? And we very much look at this as a moonshot on per with work we're doing on topics like self driving cars or quantum computing. Because this is very challenging. This goes beyond. At the work we've already done to operate as carbon neutral since 2007 or to match a hundred percent of our electricity with renewable energy since 2017. This is about getting to absolute zero for our operations. And this means that we will be Seeking to drive this change through large scale procurement of clean energy. We've already made huge progress here. We have 50 wind and solar projects globally that we have committed to invest over $4 billion by 2034. And it means other new solutions as well. So at IO we're gonna be sharing That we are doing carbon intelligent load shifting in our data centers. This means that we will be able to be the first company to implement load shifting across times and places so that later this The time about this time next year about a third of our non urgent compute tasks will be taking place at times when there is more carbon free energy on the grid.