New streaming music service, Larry Page take spotlight at Google I/O
Tech Industry
-Google's annual I/O conference this year was a drastically different affair from last year.
No high-flying stunts, and no new device announcements.
The highlight was a surprise rare appearance by CEO Larry Page, who sounded hoarse due to strained vocal cords.
-We should be building great things that don't exist.
-Page was preceded by a parade of Google executives striding out the tech giant's latest creations.
Among them, a
$10 a month streaming music service to compete with the likes of Spotify and Pandora.
-So, this is radio without rules.
The song keeps playing, but in the background, All Access has made us a never-ending mix of related tracks.
Now, if we're curious about what's coming up, we can swipe to take a little peek ahead.
But more importantly, we can tap on the Playlist icon and see in detail everything that's coming up.
-A redesigned Google+ was unveiled with a look and feel reminiscent of Pinterest.
-And this new stream is about design and depth.
And today, we're introducing related hashtags.
What we'll do is we'll analyze the content of a post and Google will put on the appropriate hashtag.
-New photo features to enhance and edit your images were introduced.
One, which Google humbly called Auto-awesome, creates short animations from a series of photos taken in quick bursts.
Sharing photos may be less of a chore, thanks to a tool that selects highlights
from a larger batch of images.
-So, if you go on a vacation to Thailand, it will take out things that are overexposed and underexposed and blurry, and it will filter in photos that you want to see.
So, people that you have affinity for, your family or your friends.
-Google also demonstrated a simpler way to search on desktops using your voice and a new hot-wording feature that anticipates your query.
-Okay, Google.
Show me pictures of the Sta.
Cruz Boardwalk.
-They're taking on Apple and Siri in a really big way.
And what they're doing behind the
scenes is really connecting together things like voice, social, mapping across all of the services.
We're gonna see much, much more of that.
-It wasn't a flashy conference, but the new tools announced may offer more substance.
Getting users the information they want, when they want it.
In San Francisco, I'm Sumi Das, CNET.com for CBS News.
