Google recently announced a slew of software updates that y’all should know about, including
some really interesting security and privacy features.
Hey smores I’m Shannon Morse and I love talking tech, security, and privacy.
If that floats your boat, subscribe to see more, including my reviews of the new and
upcoming Pixel devices.
Google based a lot of discussion around Android 13, saying that they’re still pushing for
RCS adoption through different manus and carriers, which would bring E2EE to messaging.
I’m a big fan of RCS and pushing it’s adoption so I’m all for this.
On top of this, Android 13 beta, which was released the same week as Google IO, will
include support for RCS messaging in group chats.
Google Chrome and Android will now allow you to use virtual credit card numbers instead
of physical ones to make online purchases, which can help prevent fraud.
Account Safety is getting a boost with a new alert feature that’ll prompt you to add
additional security to your account.
As an example, I just saw one of these prompts on my gmail account asking me to enable 2FA.
There was an option to say “I already have 2FA enabled” so that’s what I clicked
and the popup went away.
If you want to have a digital copy of your ID on your phone...
you will be able to with the Google Wallet.
Your drivers license or a digital ID card can be added to the Wallet, and you could
share it via NFC or QR Code.
I’m a little wary about this and need to see some whitepapers about security analysis
before I do this for my own phone.
Google Pay is being streamlined to look more minimalist and make it easier to access things
like tickets, park passes, and IDs.
Also I wanted to mention though this was announced a few weeks ago, if you see your phone number,
address, or email listed in google search results, Google’s gonna give you an automated
way to remove that info.
That can be incredibly useful with combating doxxing, harassment, and identity theft.
Casting music, movies, and photos will be available to more device manufacturers who
partner with Google.
And Google will be implementing compatibility with Matter.
What is Matter?
I haven’t talked about it much on this channel yet, but Matter will be a cross platform protocol
for smarthome products launching later this year that should help your different branded
devices all talk to each other, but also help with security at the same time.
Google will be introducing Fast Pair to allow you to pair and connect smart products faster
if they use Matter.
Lastly for security and privacy… but more about safety…
Wear OS will be getting the SOS feature - just like the phones have now, this will allow
you to call emergency services straight from your android watch.
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Google is also introducing a bunch of accessibility features this year.
For example, Google Translate will get 24 new languages including ones for indigenous
native americans.
Y’all know I already try to add chapters and captions to my videos, but Google is expanding
automated chapter generation and transcriptions to videos across Youtube.
This is a great step for creators - helping automate some of our post production work
- and will make it more accessible.
Then we now know about a bunch of just plain cool features that will be coming to Google
tools and products.
For example, Google Maps is getting some upgrades.
Immersive Mode in Google Maps is coming soon to a city near you - with cities like LA,
SF, and Tokyo getting it first this year.
AI will join together billions of images from street view and aerial imaging to create a
more immersive view of the world, where you can look at places up close, and you’ll
be able to slide a timer to see what a place looks like at different times of the day - does
it get crowded at lunch time?
What time does traffic start backing up
on that street?
I’m absolutely going to use this for my next trip to Tokyo, whenever that happens.
Google Docs will have better spam control, and the new TLDR mode will give you the cliff
notes version of a doc.
A super useful new tool coming to Google Search... soon you’ll be able to take a photo of something,
like a hardware component for your sprinkler system, add the words “near me” and google
will find that component in stock at a store near you.
This is called Multisearch Near Me.
Scene Exploration is also launching for Search.
This will let you scan, for example, an aisle of food at a grocery store, and get an overlay
of information for the products seen so you could quickly find that particular type of
cookie you’re looking for or that specific type
of wine.
Real Tone will be getting some upgrades later this year with a new filter rolling out to
Google Photos, and their skin tone scale is now open sourced so any developers can use
this feature to make their own applications more consistent and true to reality.
If you have a Nest Hub Max, it’ll now recognize you looking at it and prompt you to ask it
a question, no longer requiring you to say Hey Google.
This is called Look and Talk.
Also, Assistant will now be a bit more patient when you’re talking to it.
So if you’re like me and you say “Hey Google, add uhhhh.... potatoes to my shopping
list”, it’ll wait for me to finish my thought before timing out and telling me it
didn’t understand me.
Surprisingly they mentioned tablets...
with Android 13 bringing things like drag and drop and multiscreen views to tablets
and their apps.
That’s a lot of updates.
I’m curious if you’re excited about any of these new features or are just kinda meh
about them.
Personally I’m pretty stoked about RCS, the Matter protocol, and the google maps updates.
Comment below on your thoughts.
And check out my other google coverage video about the new Pixel devices.
Thanks for watching!