Google's Page Says Web Progress Hampered By Rivals' 'Negativity'

Google CEO Larry Page made a surprise appearance at the company’s I/O development summit and called on rivals including Microsoft and Oracle to end to the “negativity” he believes has hampered progress with the Web.

“I think we’re all here because we share a deep sense of optimism about the potential of technology to improve people’s lives and the world,” Page said to the more than 6,000 developers gathered in San Francisco for the company’s three-day technology fest.

“Despite the faster change we have in the industry, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities that we have,” Page said.  “And some of that I think is due to the negativity. Every story I read about Google, it’s kind of us versus some other company, or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum. There’s a lot of opportunity out there.”

Page spoke for about 10 minutes to share his thoughts about technology in general and some of the innovations that Google is working on specifically – including a new version of its popular Google Maps unveiled today — before fielding questions from the audience for about 30 minutes. His appearance was a surprise because he hasn’t appeared in public in a year. Yesterday, he said that was due to a rare problem with his vocal cords that required surgery. In a Google+ posting, Page talked about his voice issue and said that they won’t interfere with his ability to do his job. Google co-founder Sergey Brin told him “I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully.”

At least some of those words today were directed at his rivals, with Page calling out Microsoft and Oracle when asked about how he views progress in Web technologies and open standards.

“We’re really excited about the web obviously being birthed from it as a company, and we’ve invested a lot personally in the open standards behind all that,” Page said. “I’ve personally been quite sad at the industry’s behavior around all these things. If you just take something as simple as instant messaging, we’ve kind of had an offer forever that will interoperate on instant messaging. I think just this week Microsoft took advantage of that by interoperating with us but not doing the reverse, which is really sad, right? That’s not the way to make progress. You need to actually have interoperation not just people milking off one company for their own benefit. Google has always stood for that. I’ve been sad that the industry hasn’t been able to advance those things generally because of a focus on negativity and on zero sum games.”

“I’m sad that the Web is probably not advancing as fast as we should be,” he added. “We struggle with people like Microsoft.”

As for Oracle, Page, responding to acrimony and a long-running court battle between the companies over Google’s use of Oracle’s Java technology in the Android mobile operating system, Page said Oracle had rebuffed its efforts to make peace. “We’d like to have a cooperative relationship with them but it doesn’t seem possible. Money seems more important to them,” Page said, before adding that the companies would work through their problems.

Google executives used the 3.5-hour keynote event today to announce new features in the Android mobile operating system and Chrome desktop operating system and browser. Daniel Graf, a director of Google Maps, took a not-so-subtle crack at mobile rival Apple when he announced new features and described Google’s map application  as simple, sleek and “let’s not forget, accurate.” Apple, which unveiled a rival Maps App in September, had to apologize to iPhone users after they complained about numerous inaccuracies in the maps information.

Google also used the opening of the three-day event to announce a new subscription based music service called Google Play Music All Access, updates to its Google Play store, Google Cloud Messaging Service, and Google+ social networking service, and a new mobile app of its Hangouts video conferencing technology that will run on Android and Apple iOS-based smartphones and tablets. Next month, it will it sell a version of Samsung’s new Galaxy S smartphone that features the interface from the Google Nexus tablet for $649.

And of course, it also announced numerous new features and tools for developers, including help finding translation services for their apps and tools that allow developers to better track the revenue earned from apps distributed through the Google Play store. There was also a lot of talk about advancements in Google’s voice recognition technology, which powers its Google Now notification service and new conversational voice technology that will power its desktop search service in the future.

As always, Google also announced a product giveaway to attendees: a Google Chromebook Pixel notebook, which has a retail value of $1,200.

There were brief mentions of Google Glass, the smart eyewear it introduced with much fanfare at last year’s I/O, but no new news about the device.  When asked by a conference goer if Google would continue to create more devices like Glass, Page said Brin is working on exploring new uses beyond Glass and the driverless cars the company already has in development.

“Technology  should do the hard work so that people can get on with doing the things that make them happiest in life,” Page said.

Below is a play-by-play of the opening keynote.

• 8:44 a.m. Google has let attendees into the main conference hall. With nothing happening so far, everyone seems to be snapping photos of each other. Lots of folks wearing their Google Glasses (men and women). The keynote should begin shortly.
•  8:54 a.m. Google shares crossed $900 and are now trading at $909.55.
• Crowd discussing whether Google CEO Larry Page, who yesterday revealed he had vocal cord surgery, will kick off this year’s events. His voice problems led him to miss last year’s I/O event.
• 9:00: Crowd is counting down to opening of the event. Lots of cheering and whistling.

• Vic Gundotra, Google SVP, greets the crowd on behalf of Google. 6,000 people in attendance. 40,000 people are watching view vieweing parties and 1 million watching via YouTube, he says. “Your building of platform and services has been deeply appreciated.”
• Now Sundar Pichai, VP of Android, Chrome & Apps takes the stage. “We’re going through one of the most innovative phases in personal computing,” he says. “Most people in the world used one operating system, which was Windows.” Mostly limited to desktop and notebook PCs. “Fast forward to about seven years ago, with the advent of smartphones, there’s been an explosion of devices…It’s not just phones and laptops anymore.” Now it’s thermostats, watches with displays and sensors, and there new devices like Google Glass. “Users are really adopting these computing devices.”
• “We are fortunate at Google to have two platforms…Android and Chrome.” Android started with a simple goal of bringing mobile standards to the industry and today it is the most popular mobile OS in the world. Chrome’s goal was to design a simple, faster and safer browser. Pichai says it is now the most popular browser used in the world.
• “We at Google are building on top of these platforms…We call it the ‘best of Google.’ Thanks developers for building apps and tools as well.
• 9:08: Says he’s going to discuss Android. In 2012, 400 million activiations of Android. “The momentum has been breathtaking since then.”
• Today, 900 million activations of Android. “Remember there are mover 7 billion people on this planet, so we have a long way to go,” Pichai jokes.
• Hugo Barra, vp, product management for Android, now up. Google Play has just crossed 48 billion app installs, with 2.5 billion installs in the last month alone. This year, we’ve paid out more money to Google developers in Google Play than all of last year. Revenue per user is 2.5x what it was a year ago, globally. (But he hasn’t disclosed any of the actual revenue figures).
• Google Play services launched a year ago as a layer on top of Android, Barra says, and APIs are made available to developers so they can develop apps for all devices. One of the first APIs it released via Google Play services was the one for Google Maps. “It allows you to build Google Maps directly into your apps.”
• Location is a key input into maps. Google says its introducing three new Maps APIs today. One is Fused Location Provider, which uses less battery life. The second one is Geofencing — allows you to define ‘virtual fencing’ around geographical areas. You can have up to 100 geofences simultaneously activated per app. Third API is called Activity Recognition — uses accelerometer to determine if user is walking, cycling or driving.
• 9:17: Barra is now demoing Google+ sign in, API which was introduced a few months ago. Shows how automatic sign in happens across devices, platforms.
• Update on Google Cloud Messaging, which lets developers push messages to their apps. Google says it’s delivering 17 billion messages per day. 60 percent of apps use GCM. Introducing three new features in GSM today, including persistent connection, upstream messaging (sends  messages from apps to servers), and an API that synchronizes notifications. (Developers seem happy with the update, based on cheers).
• Major new service being added today: new family of APIs for game developers. It’s called Google Play Game Services. First API, Cloud save lets you save game information for user. There’s also a new APIs for handling achievements (rewards) and leaderboards (how gamer ranks against other players). Will work on Android and iOS so that you can have cross-gaming experiences, he says.
• Another Google Play Game Service API announced will handle multiplayer games. Integrates with Google+ for gamers who want to find other people to play against, Barra says. He’s now trying to demo a game, but the network connection in the room is kind of slow. Can’t get the game demo to work. Twittersphere talking up how the demo bombed.
• Now showing off Android Studio, a tool for creating apps. Make it easier to preview how the app will look on multiple screen sizes for smartphones and tablets (lots of applause for that).
• 9:31: Now up, Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play, to talk about the Google Play developer console. New features for helping developers make money on Android. First new feature offers optimization tips that tells developers how the app is doing in Google Play and what developers can do to get more users. New App Translation Service for identifying translations companies that can help developers translate their apps. Takes about a week for services to do the translations.
• Another new feature for Google Play developer console: referral service. Measures installations of apps and where those users are coming from. Says Google Analytics metrics will be able to be accessed in the Google Play developer console starting later this summer. Developers will also be able to see revenue for their app, by user and country.
• Google also offering ability to do beta testing and staged rollouts (to a limited user base over time) from the developer console.
• To recap: Five new features in the developer console; optimization trips, app translation service, usage metrics and referral tracking, revenue graphics and beta testing & staged rollouts.
• 9:39: Chris Yerga, engineering director for Android, is now on. He’s going to talk to improvements to Google Play. Says the Google Play store was recently redesigned. Showing how it looks on a tablet. New play store has been updated to help users “discover” content — recommends music, apps, books etc. based on previous choices. Says users will now also be able to find apps that were specifically designed for tablets.
• Google announces Google Play Music All Access subscription service. Demoing the service — playlists curated by music editors; top albums; etc. Access to millions of songs. Anything you’re listening into can be turned into a “radio” station. “This is radio without rules.”  Can blend your personal music library with Google Play Music All Access. It’s $9.99 per month. If you start a trial by June 30, you pay only $7.99 per month. Launching today in the U.S.
• Hugo Barra back on stage. Talking about new interface on Samsung Galaxy S4 — it’s running Android Jelly Bean with the same interface that Google developed for its Nexus tablet. This version of the smartphone — with the Nexus user experience — will be sold on Google Play with 16 gigabytse and support for T-Mobile and AT&T LTE networks. Goes on sale June 26 for $649.
• 9:56: Discussion now switches to Chrome. Says there are more than 750 million active users of Chrome, up from 450 million last year. Chrome runs on Android and Apple’s iOS. Sundar Pichai is back on stage. Says Samsung Chromebook, has been No. 1 on Amazon for 190 consecutive days in the notebook category.
• “With Chrome, our goal has been to make sure it’s your web — personalized for you.” To do that, need to take mobile web forward, Pichai says.
• 10:00: Google shares now trading at $906.71.
• Pichai is demoing a game that was developed by Warner Bros. for the upcoming Hobbit movie, showing how the game looks on its tablet and Chromebook. Uses WebGL — Google’s web technology that accelerates 3D graphics through its Chrome browser. You can read more about WebGL here.
• Linus Upson, vp engineering of Chrome, takes the stage. “We’re always trying to figure out how to make the browser smaller and faster.” Says there have been JavaScript speed improvements. Google has developed WebP, an open source compression technology for photos and animated images. Google+ and Facebook are adopting WebP format.  Says it can be used in place of JPEG, PNG, animated GIFs.
• For video, Google offers VP9 format versus H.264 video format — optimized for mobile so that it can save time and money. YouTube will be supporting VP9 later this year, Upson says.
• Now talking about e-commerce and how users abandon their purchases because it’s complicated to complete a purchase. Says Chrome allows you to store payment information to make checkout faster and easier from mobile devices. “This is going to make shopping from your phone much, much easier.”
• Upson is discussing Web components and innovations they’re working on there (there will be sessions about this during I/O.) Just fyi, I/O runs through Friday. Agenda for the conference is here.
• Demo now of a game called Racer for Chrome. You can find it here.
• Upson shows a film on how far web has come in the past 20 years., in terms of development tools and what you could do. Kind of quaint.
• Pichai is now back on stage, talking about the Google Chromebook Pixel. Google is giving it away to attendees.  Retail price: $1,299.
• 10:22: Discussion now about education. Google announcing a new initiative that makes it more affordable to put tablets/apps in classrooms. Shows Google Play for Education — sorts apps in a way that educators may find useful, makes it easy to buy apps in bulk and distribute to devices quickly. Will be launched in the fall.
• Pichai says 3,000 schools in the U.S. using Chromebooks. In Malaysia, primary and secondary schools using Chromebooks as well.
• Google+, Search and Maps teams are now headed to stage to announce developments in those areas. First up, Google+. (Video showing a lot of  famous Hangouts, with the President and Mrs. Obama as well as celebrities like Alicia Keys.)
• Vic Gundotra — 41 new features are being added to Google+. Includes new stream, new hangouts, new photo support.
• 10:32: Starts with new Stream in Google+. Starting later today, new multi-column interface will be rolled out for Google+. Can chose single column if you prefer. “We’ve made sure its fast, fluid and fun.” Menus slide in and out, cards that flip and fade.
• Google is also adding related hashtags. Will analyze content, automatically tag posts and then will search Google content and rank it and show related items. Hashtags automatically added to posts/images so that you can easily find content — “You can just go deeper,” Gundotra said. Content creators can opt out of hashtags if they want.
• Now switching to Google Hangouts. Announcing a new version that is a standalone mobile app for the Web, Android and Apple’s iOS.  Shows “conversations” that are stored so you can go back and rewatch/listen to prior conversations.  Include photos in the conversations. “It really feels like you’re in the same room together.”
• New hangout supports group video. “Group video at no charge. Isn’t that fantastic?”
• On to Photos. Says it takes a lot of time to organize, edit, upload and share photos. Google is combining user’s camera with Google cloud to create a cloud-based darkroom.
• First he recaps storage —  store photos as backup (15 gigabytes of storage now free this week, up from 5 gigabytes beforehand) at full resolution. Talks about photo selection — Google picks best photos as part of a “highlights” features. Automatically ignores duplicates, fuzzy/out-of-focus/choose best shots among multiple photos of same shot. Also says algorithm can search to see if people are smiling in photos to determine if they should end up as “Highlights.” It’s going to roll out tonight.
• On to enhancing images. Google introduce “Auto Enhance” — corrects tonal distribution, does redeye reductions and noise reduction, skin softening, among other things, to automatically improve the image quality. Google says it can recognize human face and skin — that “breakthrough” means that when we do other effects, we can treat the human face separate from other elements in the photo.
• 10:50: Gundotra is doing a deep dive into how the autocorrect filters (sorry, they call them autoenhance) works.
• Google shares now trading at $905.66.
• Gundotra talking about a new service “Auto Awesome. ” Five features that play with your images: Motion combines photos to create a little animation, Smile finds images with people smiling to create a slideshow, basically, of all those images. If you have images stored with Google, they’ve gone through an applied the Auto Awesome features to those images. You’ll see them there this afternoon.
• Amit Singhai on stage to talk about Search. He’s going through a discussion of Knowledge Graph and how it helps people find relevant search results using simple questions. “The graph becomes more and more powerful each day.” In addition to simple queries — What is the population of India? — you can ask and get results that compare that answer to other countries.
• He says Google also adding additional language support. Adds to English and 8 other languages,  Polish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
• Conversational search — or what he calls hot-word search — is being added to desktop. Uses microphone to ask questions and get search results from Google.
• Google Now is being updated. New cards for reminders, public transit commute, and for music, books, video and TV shows you may be interested in.
• Johanna Wright, vp in search, demoing new conversational search and how it works on desktop in Chrome/Chrome OS. (Lots of applause for the voice recognition technology) and mobile. Also demoing voice recognition with Google Now — and how you can check your reminders (flight info, hotel reservations, etc.)
• 11:12: Singhai back on stage. Says that new search is still in development. “The announcements today are a really good sign of the progress we have made.”
• Brian McClendon, head of Google Maps. up now.  Total of 200 countries, including North Korea, now available.
• For Street View imagery, Google now covers 50 countries. We’ve driven 5 million miles to capture the images.  Also captured images like the Great Barrier Reef.
• After working with satellite and aerial imagery, started generating 3D geometry. “This idea of generating data from other data is fundamental to what Google does.”
• Today, over 1 million websites using Google Maps. Visited my more than 1 billion people. That’s made possible by Google Maps API, he says.
• Google I/O will host 16 sessions on Google Maps.
• He turns the stage to Daniel Graf, director of Google Maps, to talk about mobile. Says Google Maps on the iPhone has been a “tremendous success…People have called it sleek, beautiful, simple and let’s not forget, accurate.” (Lots of laughs over that — Apple’s Map, fyi, was dinged in early incarnation for containing many inaccuracies.)
• Graf is demoing next version of Google Maps for Android and iOS. Will integrate great deals from world’s best brands (like Starbucks) into Maps data when you do a search. They’re calling it a new “offers” experience and says they have many retail partners.
• On to directions and navigation. Adding live coverage of traffic incidents, and dynamic rerouting as part of an early warning system to help you avoid problem spots on the route.
• Also announcing a new tablet experience for Google Maps.  Adds an “Explore” feature that lets you dig into shopping, playing, other attractions. It’s coming this summer to Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.
• Jonah Jones, Bernhard Seefeld, Google Maps product managers,  up to talk about how you can create customized maps with images. And to use the map as the user interface. So they’ve rebuilt Google Maps — vector maps in the browser. See more search results on the maps rather than just a limited number of pins. Also makes recommendations of places you might want to try based on your previous choices.
• 11:39: Maps are integrated with images — gives you a Google Earth experience right in the browser. Then you can take a tour of notable sights (we’re inside a 3D photo tour generated by uploaded user photos). Anyone can upload a photosphere (360-degree view).
• Now showing a view of the Earth, with real-time clouds. Also a night view of the Earth.
• New Google Maps is available today. You can preview it on the desktop.  Go to maps.google.com/preview to get an invite to view the new Google maps.
• Google CEO Larry Page takes the stage. Says he asked for a while for a night view of the Earth — but wants a higher resolution version.
• Talking about his dad taking him to a robotics conference when he was a kid and having to argue to get him in. His dad had a degree in communication sciences — that’s what they called computer science when they thought computers were a fad. Says we don’t have to worry about that anymore. He’s talking about how powerful smartphones have become. “Technology should do the hard work so people can do the things that make them happiest in life.”
• “I think Google now gives you information without you even having to ask,” Page says. “Think about a really smart assistant doing all these things for you so you don’t have to think about it…And we’re just getting started.”
• “I”m amazed every day I come to work the list of things to do is bigger than the day before. And the opportunity is bigger…We’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities.”
• Says there’s negativity in the media, pitting Google against other companies. “Most important things are not zero sum. There’s a lot of opportunities out there. We can use technology to make new, really important things to make people’s lives better.”
• Says farming is great if you want to do it, but it may not be fun if you have to do it. “Technology lets us free up ourselves to do more, different things.”
• 11:53: Page now talking about car of the future and how much time you can save on commute time.  ”We need more kids falling in love with science and math and more kids graduating with science and engineering degrees…More people working on technology problems.”
• Says Google got involved with the The Internship movie because computer science has a marketing problem because people in tech are viewed as “curmudgeons.”
• “I can’t wait to see what’s next. I got goosebumps watching some of the presentations here.”
• He’s now going to take questions from the audience. Reminds them more than 1 million people watching via YouTube.
• Robert Scoble goes up first and identifies himself as “one of the first glassholes.” Page says, “I didn’t appreciate the shower picture at all.” Here’s what Page is talking about: https://plus.google.com/+Scobleizer/posts/TcaqNeYJWXo.
• Question is about the future of the Web and how the web is advancing? Page says he’s quite sad about the industry around instant messaging because of the focus on negativity in zero sum games. Says the web is advancing as not as it should be because of everyone’s vested interest, lack of support for open standards. Says Google “struggles with Microsoft.” But he doesn’t grade the industry well in terms of where we’ve gotten to in terms of cooperation.
• Question about how Google is helping to protect freedom of speech. “We at google have a strong desire of freedom of speech, for a free flow of information.” Says he makes sure we’re talking to governments. “We’re working very hard on making sure we’re protecting your private information, making sure we’re ensuring computer security.” And “making sure we’re being as transparent as we can about requests we get from governments.”
• Question on Google Fiber. He calls the effort around that as a “no brainer.” Says, “As a computer scientist I view it as a kind of sad that we have all these computers out there that re connected to each through a tiny, tiny, tiny pipe that is super slow.” Most computers are in people’s homes and can’t be connected to work in more useful ways, he says.
• Next question on what’s next for Google after Glass, automated cars. Page says Sergey Brin is focused on that. “That’s a fascinating job…Automated cars is just one thing you can do. We also think it’s a way that the company can scale.” To the extent that our products are inter-related, Google needs to do management to make sure they all work seamlessly. “Every time we do something crazy, we make progress. Not all the time. But some of the time…No matter how much money we try to spend on automated cars or gmail, they ened up being small checks.”
• Page talked about Google Glass and how he sees its possibility as a low cost computing device in the future.
• Asked about Oracle and the relationship over Java, which Oracle owns. “We’d like to have a cooperative relationship with them but it doesn’t seem possible. Money seems more important to them.” Says “we’ll get through that.”
• Question about education and the use of computers/software to solve problems. People are starving in the world not because we don’t have enough food. It’s because we’re not organized to solve that.” Says computers need to be organized to help solve problems so that people can be educated about the things they need to be educated about.
• Q: What’s your advice about reducing negativity in talking about computers/Google? “People naturally are concerned about change, and certainly not all change is good. The pace of change in the world is increasing.” Part of the problem is we haven’t adapted the mechanisms to deal with the rate of change in technology.  Page says a lot of laws were written 50 years ago before some of these technologies came to be. Maybe more people need to go into other areas and help the wider world understand the implications of technology. Says there are things that we cant’ do with technology because they’re deemed illegal. Technologists should have “safe places where we can try out new things” and test them. he cites Burning Man as an example. We dont’ have mechanisms for them, he adds.
• 12:23: What are strengths of Google to help healthcare? Page says Google didn’t make a lot of progress on healthcare because it ran into regulatory problems. “We’ve found the kind of things we were working on in healthcare — we weren’t able to move beyond that because of all the constraints there.” He said I just disclosed yesterday by voice issues and he got a lot of thoughtful emails and advice. “Why are people so focused on keeping your medical history private? The answer is insurance. You’re worried you’re going to lose your insurance. That makes no sense. We should change” the laws so that you don’t lose your insurance. Again, he says there may need to be safe places.
• Q: Why not more women in technology? Page says he’s been “super focused on that forever.” Said he and Sergey tried to interview women because they didn’t want Google to end up “all male, which is a bad thing.” Said the need to start earlier in getting women interested in tech.
• Question: Will Google do anything with DNA analysis and imaging technology? Page says it’s areas we look into but nothing to announce at this time.
• Question about bringing developers online: Page says you don’t have smartphones going into some countries because they are too expensive today. But they are getting cheaper. “The smartphone you have today will be in two or three years in Africa and India and that will be amazing.” Page says he can get a lot of what he needs to get done on his smartphone. “People are underestimating how fast that can happen.”
• 12:30: Page is done with Q&A and thanks everyone for attending.