Google just wrapped up their big keynote at i/o 2019 this week now if you're
unfamiliar I/O is Google's annual Developers Conference and as expected
there were major feature announcements for the Google assistant as well as a
brand new Google assistant device that was announced so we've got a lot to talk
about let's dive in and the first thing that I want to cover is the brand new
Google assistant device Google at i/o just announced the Google Nest hub max
now if you first look at the nest hub max and are like Josh isn't this just a
larger Google home hub with a camera well at first glance yes you're right
that is kind of what it is but I want to go deeper into the device because there
are significant changes that Google has made and upgrades that they've made to
this device as well as the name I don't know if you caught it but Google Nest
hub max is a very different naming convention than what we've had
previously with Google home products and that is because Google has now rebranded
Google home products to Google nest products so from here on out any new
product that Google makes as a smart home product will have the Google Nest
branding with it now existing devices like the Google home mini Google home
and Google home acts their names will not change for now however the Google
home hub that name has changed to Google Nest hub which makes sense you have the
nest hub max which is the larger version with the camera and then you have the
nest hub so what's the big deal with the Google nest hub max well it does have a
10-inch screen now we have seen a 10-inch screened Google assistive
display before the Lenovo smart display comes in a 10 inch screen variant
another thing that people have pointed out about the nest hub formerly of
course known as the Google home hub is that the sound quality is just kind of
mad so what Google did with the nest hub max is they have just cranked up the
sound output that you're going to be able to get from this device it has
stereo sound of the front so it's got two tweeters that face
outward and then it has a three inch woofer in the back the camera on the
nest hub max seems to have two primary functions the first one is for video
calling with Google duo it has a six megapixel camera that is wide-angle
which is great if you have a lot of people over the second scenario that the
camera makes it a differentiator is it's really going to act like a nest security
camera for your home so let's say you're away you put the nest hub max in your
living room and you just want to check in to make sure the dog hasn't destroyed
your living room well you could just take out your phone go into the nest app
and then you can see the live camera feed coming from your nest home max
right there on your smart phone now another feature that Google is doing
with the camera that I thought was super interesting is the ability to pause and
play media and that's simply just by doing this you can simply raise your
hand put your palm out and the nest hub max has image recognition and processing
located locally on the device it will notice that gesture and pause and play
media what else can the camera do on the nest hub max well it has facial
recognition technology let's say it's in the morning I'm getting ready I go out
to the living room and I look at the nest hub max the nest of Max is going to
go oh hey I see that's Josh and I know josh is probably heading to work based
on his schedule so let me display car that shows how
many minutes is going to take me to get to work let me also show him a car to
the weather and some other personalized things like what's on my calendar it
will do all that just by you looking at the display of course all these features
while being great have it a product with a camera can make some people nervous
and Google of course knows this so what they've done is they have a mute switch
on the back that's very similar to the nest hubs mute switch now I don't know
if a lot of people know this but those switches are actually physical switches
the switch actually disconnects the wiring to the microphone so with the
nest hub max when you switch that to mute it is physically disconnecting the
microphone and can from the system the Google nest hub
backs will retail at 229 US dollars and will become available later this summer
now it's sibling the device formerly known as the Google home hub will now be
bre branded to the google nest hub and that will now retail at a new lower
price at a hundred and twenty nine US dollars and the google mess tab will
also roll out to twelve additional countries to look up those countries you
can see Google's blog post and I'll make sure to link that below in the video
description now that we've talked about the brand new Google assistant device
let's switch and talk about the brains of all of our Google assistant devices
and that is the Google assistant Google announced that they are now going to be
able to bring the Google assistant running on a local device so it does not
have to interact with the network nearly as much as it currently does Google has
now been able to take all of that and put it in a point five gigabit file that
can run locally on a smart phone and it's going to start with the brand new
Google pixels not the ones that were just announced with the ones that will
be announced later this year likely titled the Google pixel four and Google
pixel for excel those devices will be the first ones to be able to run this
but I wanted to start with this because this is a huge technical achievement now
you're probably like okay that's great you know great job technical achievement
what does that mean for me what it means for the user is the Google assistant is
going to get 10 times faster in its response times now Google did a demo of
this feature at i/o I will link the video below in the description it is
worth taking a look at it is jaw-dropping how fast this assistant is
working on a pixel phone and hopefully over time Google will be rolling this
out to more devices now another very welcomed feature that came out of Io for
the Google assistant has to do with alarms and timers there's a new way to
stop alarms and timers and all you have to do is just say stop so what's going
on here is starting today in the US with the English version of the
assistant you can just say stop to stop a timer or an alarm you no longer have
to say the trigger word at all what happens is when a alarm or timer goes
off Google then start listening for you to tell it to stop another thing to come
out of Io is about Google assistant smart displays now though beginning even
smarter with a new feature called picks for you
picks for you is basically just a recommendation engine for certain areas
of the Google assistant smart display UI so areas like podcasts events recipes
similar to the way that the YouTube recommended content engine works so for
the Google assistant smart displays this is mainly going to work with things like
recipes so we noticed you cooked this we think you'll like cooking this next
picks for you will launch on Google assistant smart displays later this
summer google also announced that a new mode will be coming to the Google
assistant on smart phones which will be driving mode for the Google assistant
with driving mode what it does is it changes the UI slightly of the Google
assistant on smart phones for bigger buttons easier to hit while you're
driving and it's going to have recommended contextual buttons that come
up for things that it thinks you may want to know while you're driving
driving mode for the Google Assistant is expected to roll out later this summer
well that's it for the main features that were announced for the Google
assistant at Google i/o but before we wrap up there are two additional things
I want to talk about that our Google Assistant related and the first one is
an update to Google Duplex if you remember from last year Google duplex is
the technology that allows the Google assistant to call a restaurant or a hair
salon on your behalf to make a reservation or make an appointment what
Google has done now is they've looked at what are some other areas and problems
that we can solve and make people's lives better with this technology and
what that ultimately came to is a new set of capabilities for Google duplex
called Google duplex on the web they've really honed in Google duplexes focus on
tap and these aren't just tasks that you can
do with your voice like we've seen earlier with making a reservation these
are tasks like booking a car rental this feature just has the potential to save
you a ton of time now the last thing I want to talk about before wrapping up is
another Google assistant related technology and that is Google Lenz they
have announced some really impressive features this time with Google lens and
the first one I want to talk about and they also did a demo of this I'll link
it below you hold your smartphone with Google and selected at a sign in a
foreign country google lens will translate that sign into your local
language so you can actually see it it's like augmented reality it'll actually
translate it on the sign itself and then it'll read out that translation for you
in your local language I mean this is like something out of Star Trek it is
super impressive technology now another thing that got people really excited
during the i/o keynote that Google lens could do is you can point your camera
with google lens open at a reciept google lens will then read the receipt
and automatically calculate what your tip should be and you can of course
select what percentage tip that you need to tip or let's say you're splitting the
bill with people it can automatically calculate that just by looking at the
receipt super impressive technology and I can't wait for it to roll out and try
it myself that's it for the updates out of i/o 2019 for the Google assistant
thank you so much for watching if you're interested in any of the topics we went
over today make sure you subscribe to the channel and if you'd like this video
hit that thumbs up button and leave a comment below letting us know what were
you excited about at Google i/o and what were your main takeaways from the event
well thanks again for watching for 6 Months Later I'm Josh Teder