[MUSIC PLAYING]
BARATUNDE THURSTON: You know where we're going?
RICK OSTERLOH: We have this idea that in the future,
you can get help wherever you are, for whatever you need.
It's almost like it's in the air.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Hey, what's up, man?
RICK OSTERLOH: How's it going?
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Have you seen any of this stuff?
RICK OSTERLOH: Never been here.
Come on in.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Thank you.
FRANCES KWEE: I'm not necessarily
designing this for myself.
I'm designing it for people out there that really
could use an assistant now.
ERIC MACINTOSH: There's a lot of sensors, processors,
and machine learning, things that are uniquely Google.
ISABELLE OLSSON: When you combine
the ultimate piece of technology and something so human,
that's where magic happens.
SPEAKER: This vision to me is really compelling,
because we can create the new generation of products
that are truly helpful.
IVAN POUPYREV: It helps you from the background
run in the foreground.
And your foreground is your life.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Big picture.
What's the end game?
RICK OSTERLOH: It's about making it easier every day.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Making what easier?
RICK OSTERLOH: Life.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Making life easier.
RICK OSTERLOH: Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Let's take a look.
RICK OSTERLOH: Here we go.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Good morning.
Thanks so much for joining us here in New York City,
and for those on the livestream, for joining us
around the world.
Thanks so much.
We're going to spend the next hour talking
about the problems we're working to solve
for our users and the ways we're delivering
help for the way people need it when they need it.
We'll also take you into our labs
with writer and cultural commentator Baratunde Thurston
to hear from the folks at Google who personally develop,
design, and bring these products to life.
Now, if you look across all of Google's products,
from Search, to Maps, Gmail, to Photos,
our mission is to bring a more helpful Google for you,
creating tools that help you increase your knowledge,
success, health, and happiness.
Now, when we apply that mission to hardware and services,
it means creating products like these.
New Pixel phones, wearables, laptops,
and Nest devices for the home.
Each one is thoughtfully and responsibly
designed to help you in your everyday
without intruding on your life.
Now, in the mobile era, smartphones changed the world.
It's super useful to have a powerful computer everywhere
you are.
But it's even more useful when computing
is anywhere you need it, always available to help.
Now, you heard me talk about this idea with Baratunde,
that helpful computing can be all
around you, ambient computing.
Your devices work together with services and AI,
so help is anywhere you want it, and it's fluid.
The technology just fades into the background
when you don't need it.
So the devices aren't the center of the system, you are.
That's our vision for ambient computing.
The Google Assistant plays a critical role here.
It pulls everything together and gives you a familiar, natural
way to get the help you need.
Our users tell us they find the Google Assistant to be smart,
user friendly, and reliable.
And that's so important for ambient technology.
Interactions have to feel natural and intuitive.
Here's an example.
If you want to listen to music, the experience
should be the same, whether you're in the kitchen,
you're driving in your car, or hanging out with friends.
No matter what you're doing, you should just
be able to say the name of a song,
and the music just plays, without you
having to pull out a phone and tap on screens or push buttons.
So think about how this vision plays out
in the home, where ambient technology can
make life so much easier.
When you wake up in the morning, your home
knows what you need to start your day.
You can get your commute, find out
when your first meeting starts, maybe play
some music on whatever speaker or screen is nearby.
And when you leave your house, your lights, thermostat,
door locks, security cameras, they all just know what to do.
And your devices go silent and turn off notifications
at night when you want to relax, without technology interrupting
or distracting you.
So throughout your home, technology
works as a single system instead of a bunch of devices
doing their own thing.
Now, we can bring this ambient computing vision to gaming
as well.
With Stadia, our new generation cloud gaming platform,
we're aiming to deliver the best games ever made
to almost any screen in your life.
So I'm excited to share an update with you all.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Stadia will be available on November 19.
So you'll be able to play games wherever you want, on your TV,
your laptop, even your Pixel, which will be the first phone
to support Stadia when it launches.
We're also creating a few areas to create
more human interactions with technology,
like Motion Sense and the new Google Assistant for Pixel 4.
So instead of being glued to your phone,
you can use quick gestures and voice commands
and then get back to your day.
That push for quicker, more natural interactions
is leading us in new hardware directions
too, extending the phone's capabilities in new ways.
Let's take a look.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: This is clearly a time machine,
and you're pretending you're using it to test earbuds.
That's a great cover story.
Right, left, up, down.
Hello.
ISABELLE OLSSON: Hi.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Isabelle.
I know you and your team led the design for the earbuds.
ISABELLE OLSSON: We really wanted
it to just be a simple, tiny little dot floating
in your ear.
What is a simpler form than a circle, and how insanely tiny
can we make it?
Because there's two computers in there.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Those are floating computers
in your head.
ISABELLE OLSSON: Yes.
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Do you remember
how you felt when you first got the design
brief for what these earbuds were supposed to do?
KELVIN YIP: I think it's crazy.
[LAUGHS]
ERIC MACINTOSH: Certainly the assembly
is a really challenging part of this.
All of these pieces have to go together
with sub-millimeter precision.
I don't think I would have imagined
we'd be able to build things with this kind of processing
power, this small.
There's a lot of sensors and processors,
a little bit like building a ship in the bottle.
What we've managed to do here is not just make great headphones,
but really putting in all of the other things
that are uniquely Google about this, the ability
to process your voice and to make a call clear,
even when you're riding a bicycle down the sidewalk.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Yeah, yeah, OK.
ERIC MACINTOSH: A lot of software,
a lot of machine learning.
It's the magic that powers the product.
It turns a great set of headphones
into a Google set of headphones.
RICK OSTERLOH: All right.
That was a sneak peek at the all-new Google Pixel Buds.
So you can start to get an idea of what ambient computing feels
like.
With Pixel Buds, help is there when you want it,
and the experience just comes to you, even when
your phone's not in your hand.
For instance, you can get hands-free access
to the Assistant.
So instead of turning to your phone for quick tasks,
you can just say, hey, Google, and ask
the Assistant for whatever you need.
Resume your podcast, send a quick text,
get directions, or even understand another language
with Google Translate.
Pixel Buds even have a long-range Bluetooth
connection, which keeps you connected even when
your phone isn't by your side.
So you can wear them in the yard, when your phone might
be charging inside, or leave your phone in a locker
if you're working out in a gym.
Indoors, Pixel Buds will stay connected up to three rooms
away.
And outside, they'll work across an entire football field.
Of course, Pixel Buds won't be truly helpful
unless they're also great headphones.
They have to have excellent sound quality.
They've got to be comfortable to wear all the time.
And they need to last long enough to be useful.
That's a lot to ask of a pair of headphones,
especially because they also need to be unobtrusive too.
So we did some intricate origami with Pixel Buds
to make sure everything fit.
Custom speakers, sensors, custom battery.
That's usually what makes these wireless earbuds stick so far
out of your ears.
But Pixel Buds gives you plenty of battery life
to get through your day.
You'll have five hours of continuous listening
time on a single charge and up to 24 hours
when you're using a wireless charging case.
Now, even with all those components and long battery
life, you can see, Pixel Buds fits almost flush with the ear.
They're so small and light, it's easy to forget
you're wearing them.
At the same time, Pixel Buds deliver
excellent sound quality.
Now, you typically have to choose
between great sound and awareness
of the world around you.
The Pixel Buds gives you both, with a unique hybrid design.
The earbuds gently seal the ear for rich bass and clear highs,
and the spatial vent underneath reduces
that plugged-ear feeling and lets
through just the right amount of environmental sound.
On the software side, Pixel Buds respond to your surroundings
with the new, adaptive sound.
The volume dynamically adjusts as you
move from the quiet of your home to a subway or a noisy cafe,
and you don't have to constantly raise or lower the volume.
When you're on a call, beamforming mics
focus on your voice, while voice accelerometers detect speech
through your jawbone.
So a loud restaurant or a windy day
won't get in the way of your conversation.
Pixel Buds will be available in the spring of next year.
And we'll share more details in the coming months,
including a few of the helpful experiences that
make good use of the on-device machine learning chips.
So as you can see, this ambient computing era
is going to bring all kinds of new interfaces, services,
and devices, but it's also introducing new challenges.
When computing is always available,
designing for security and privacy
becomes more important than ever.
You need to know that your data is safe.
Protecting your data and respecting your privacy
are at the core of everything we do.
We've designed strong protections across our hardware
family, like the Titan security chip in our phones and laptops.
Titan protects your most personal on-device information,
your OS data, passwords, even information
in third-party apps.
And we know that privacy is personal,
which is why you have the controls,
so that you can choose the settings you
want that are right for you.
We make it easy to access simple on/off controls,
including turning cameras and mics on your Nest devices off.
And you can now delete Assistant data just by asking.
Everything is designed with your privacy in mind,
and you'll see examples of that throughout today's
presentation.
Now, we're also going to talk today
about our work to create more sustainable products
and processes.
Developing sustainable solutions to mass production
and consumption is one of the biggest challenges
we face today as an industry.
It impacts all of us, and it will for generations to come.
Now, we believe Google has both the ability
and the responsibility to create systemic change.
As a company, we've been focused on sustainability
for a long time.
Google's operations have been carbon neutral since 2007.
And for the past two years, we've
matched all of Google's energy consumption
with 100% renewable energy.
And we're continuing to expand access
to clean energy to more people, including
our suppliers and the communities
where our products are made.
So today we're announcing that Google's
committing to invest another $150 million
in renewable energy projects in key manufacturing regions.
Our investment-- our investment, alongside
financial and manufacturing partners,
aims to catalyze $1.5 billion of capital.
Now, this will generate approximately the same amount
of renewable energy as the electricity used to manufacture
Made by Google products.
So when you choose to buy hardware products from Google,
you're contributing to bringing renewable energy to communities
around the world.
Sustainable, secure and private, and of course helpful.
That's the Google way to make hardware and services.
Now, we're excited to share with you
how we build these principles into our products.
And here's Ivy Ross, who leads our design team,
who's going to talk about some of our recent work
in responsible manufacturing and design.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
IVY ROSS: Thanks, Rick.
I'm happy to be back in New York to discuss our design
philosophy at Google and tell you about a few things
that we've been working on.
I grew up not too far from here, in the Bronx.
And my dad was a designer, industrial designer, too.
And he worked for the legendary industrial designer,
Raymond Loewy, on automobiles and a lot of other consumer
goods.
When I was little, he even made me my own little roadster.
I can remember spending hours in his studio as a kid,
tinkering with different tools and materials.
And something I learned early on is that at its core,
design is about solving problems for people.
Whether you're designing a building, an automobile,
packaging, or even a phone, the goal
is to create unique solutions to the world's challenges.
And sustainability is one of the fundamental challenges
of our generation.
When you look at how most things are made today,
it just doesn't make sense.
In all too many cases, devices are
manufactured with dirty energy, from precious minerals
and materials that are rapidly depleted,
and with technology that becomes obsolete in a short time
and then thrown away.
Right now, we're truly looking at sustainability
from every angle.
For years, we've been pushing what's
possible in design, manufacturing,
and new materials.
We've been able to include recycled plastics in products
like Chromecast and the new Stadia controller.
And today I'm happy to share that all of our Nest products
launching in 2019 include recycled plastics.
Instead of these materials ending up in the ocean
or in landfill, we're giving them a new life.
We've designed and engineered the fabric
on our Nest Mini Speaker so it's made from 100% recycled plastic
bottles.
A single half-liter bottle produces enough textiles
to cover more than two Nest Minis.
And we didn't compromise on aesthetics or function.
We created beautiful recycled fabrics and colors
that blend into your home while hitting
the same rigorous technical and acoustical requirements.
We continue to focus on products that
empower people to reduce their own environmental impact as
well.
Our Nest team has been at the forefront of these efforts
since 2011.
And as of this month, Nest thermostats
have helped consumers save more than 41 billion kilowatt hours
of energy, enough to power all of Denver's electricity needs
for six years.
Rick just filled you in on our new renewable energy
investment.
And as of last month, Google is offsetting
100% of the carbon generated by our shipping partners
for all customer orders.
We have so much more to do.
But by working with our suppliers, manufacturers
on these initiatives, our goal is
to clear the way for the entire industry and our planet
to benefit.
Another sustainability goal is simply
reducing the amount of hardware you
need to buy in the first place.
What if you didn't need to upgrade a bulky new game
console every few years.
With Stadia, we're actually consolidating
devices, so the only hardware you need
is a controller and a screen to play your games anywhere,
anytime.
To give people a great gaming experience,
we designed the first cloud-based controller.
You know, great design isn't just about how something looks.
It's also about how it feels.
And subtle design differences can have a profound effect.
And we wanted the controller to be
comfortable in the hands of all gamers.
We found design inspiration in some unlikely places.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Hey, how's it going?
JASON PI: Good, man.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Nice to meet you.
JASON PI: Come on in.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: All right.
JASON PI: When I go to these really nice kitchens,
they all have these simple knives.
Like, none of them look like the grocery store knives,
with all the grips and details.
It's really uncomfortable if you rotate your hand around.
The reason why most professional kitchens
have knives like this is you can use it in many ways.
So that was a starting point for the controller.
We literally took a knife handle, and we bent it.
It was like, oh, we're on to something here.
So from there, that one ancestor basically
had hundreds and hundreds of kids.
I kept building on it, patiently,
until it became that.
And it's made for small and large hands.
So it's super usable for a large segment of gamers
that aren't always appreciated.
LAUREN CHANEN: Jason was very, very insistent
that we have a non-visible screw design.
JASON PI: It's super important to give it
that nice, clean look instead of puncturing a bunch of holes
onto the back.
LAUREN CHANEN: That was one of the biggest
challenges for product design.
We think it's really worth it.
It makes it very comfortable in the hand and seamless
and Google-y.
BARATUNDE THURSTON: Oh, wow!
That was impressive.
Good work.
IVY ROSS: We worked with thousands of people,
playing hours and hours of games,
to test our controller against all of its limits.
It needs to feel right for as many people as possible.
Putting people at the center of our design
is integral to our process and our principles.
Whether it's hardware or software,
creating truly helpful products for people starts with empathy.
One of our earliest projects we tackled within the hardware
team was designing a new kind of laptop
that could deliver performance and versatility
in a truly beautiful form.
We wanted to physically embody the speed and simplicity
that people love about Chrome OS.
The result was the original Pixelbook.
The response was great.
People really loved the award-winning design,
the keyboard, and the speed.
So over the past couple of years,
we've been working really hard to bring
that kind of experience to even more people
at a more affordable price.
I actually believe that you can be more creative when
designing within constraints.
So once again, we started with our users' needs, especially
portability and battery life.
We wanted to create a thin and light laptop that
was really fast and also have it last all day.
And of course we wanted it to look and feel beautiful.
We landed on Pixelbook Go.
The design is so distinctive, with an incredibly light
magnesium that lets us create a very smooth matte
finish in great colors.
Pixelbook Go comes in Just Black and Not Pink,
one of the iconic colors we introduced on Pixel 3.
And we created a new rippled, wavy bottom
that's easy to grip.
Pixelbook Go is lighter than Pixelbook,
but we still managed to add a battery that is 15% larger,
making it easier to keep working all day.
We also spent a lot of time making
sure the keyboard is comfortable and quiet.
We took all of our learnings from the original Pixelbook
and really refined the design.
We ended up with keys that feel great to use
and are even quieter than the original.
And with Chrome OS, Pixelbook Go is always fast, secure,
and all your devices stay in sync with each other.
Everything about Pixelbook Go is designed to address real user
needs for an affordable price.
You can preorder it now in Just Black, with Not
Pink coming soon.
Next up, my colleague, Rishi Chandra,
will tell you about the work we've been doing to make life
at home a little easier.
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
RISHI CHANDRA: Hey, everyone.
I'm excited to give an update on Google Nest and our mission
to create the helpful home.
So last month, we launched Nest Hub Max,
which is a great example of the power of ambient computing.
See your photos come to life with a screen that
automatically adjusts to your lighting conditions.
Pause your music and videos with a simple hand gesture.
And it automatically adjusts the information
it controls based on your proximity to the device.
At Nest, we want to put people first and build technology
around their needs.
It's the difference between just being smart and being
truly helpful.
So while the rest of the industry
is focused on standalone devices,
our focus is on building whole home solutions that
bring together technology to provide
real help for real homes.
And the most important place to get this right is privacy.
It's your home, the most personal, private space
in your life.
So in May, we published a clear set of privacy commitments
which helps you understand how our technology works.
Today we want to share how these commitments extend
beyond Google to our third-party ecosystem of partners.
So we're announcing an update to our Works with Google Assistant
Program.
We're working with partners to migrate their existing
works of Nest integrations that people know and love,
but doing it built on a foundation of privacy
and security.
For example, we're requiring partners
to pass a security review before they can even request access
to your Nest devices.
You should have confidence in how Google and its partners
are protecting your home data.
And then you can focus instead on the great benefits
of the helpful home.
For example, let's talk about home audio.
It used to cost thousands of dollars
and a professional installation if you wanted seamless audio
throughout your home.
Well, Google changed all that with the whole home audio
solution that is simple, affordable, and sounds great.
It started several years ago with the launch of Chromecast,
making it easy to use your phone or your voice
to play content on your favorite devices.
And with Google Home Mini, home audio
got even more affordable, with a great sounding speaker
with multi-room support.
And with Nest Hub Max, you now have a home media control
center right on your smart display.
And it all works seamlessly together with stream transfer,
where you can naturally move content around your home.
So for example, I can start a playlist
or watch a show on my Nest Hub Max in the kitchen.
And when I'm done cooking, just say, hey,
Google, move this to the living room TV.
And it'll pick up right where I left off.
It's really easy.
Now, for a lot of people, Google Home Mini
was a perfect starter kit for your audio system.
And today we're introducing the next generation, Nest Mini.
It's even more capable, with the same affordable price point,
and the same iconic design.
So let's start with the design.
Colors really help Mini blend naturally into your home.
And you now have a new color option called Sky.
And as Ivy mentioned, all of our fabric
is made from 100% recycled plastic bottles.
Now, we also heard from you, you want a little bit
more flexibility of where to place Mini,
so we added a simple wall mount.
It really looks great anywhere in your home.
Now, the original Mini was designed
to pack in great sound in a really small form.
And with Nest Mini, you get even better quality sound,
2x stronger bass and even more clear and natural sound.
And for those times when your home gets loud,
just like it does at mine, we added a third mic,
to hear you better in noisy environments.
Nest Mini also got a really cool new superpower.
There's a dedicated machine learning chip
with up to one TeraOPS of compute.
So for the first time, core experiences
of the Google Assistant can come from the data center
and be moved instead to run locally on your device.
Simply put, things are going to get
a lot faster as it learns your family's most
frequent commands.
Finally, Nest Mini also powers an amazing home communication
system.
A home intercom, so you can talk room to room,
a home alert system, telling you who's
at the front door, a home phone, allowing
you to call anyone in the world for free using Google Duo.
I can even use my phone to call my Nest devices.
It works great for those times I'm leaving work,
and I want to ask the family what they want for dinner.
So that's the new Nest Mini, our next step
in bringing seamless audio and communication
to more homes around the world.
OK.
Now let's talk about home awareness.
One of our core products is Nest Aware,
which combined with our Nest cams,
provides intelligent alerts and camera history.
Now, lots of our users have multiple cameras,
and we've heard from you that our Nest Aware
pricing can get a little expensive and complicated.
So today we're announcing a new whole home pricing model.
For one monthly rate, you get Nest Aware support across all
your Nest devices in your home.
So whether you have two cameras or you have 10 cameras,
you pay the same monthly rate.
And you can choose between two different pricing plans,
depending on your needs.
We even added more video history.
The new Nest Aware will be rolling out early next year,
and it'll be easy to switch over your existing plan.
Now, as part of the new Nest Aware subscription,
we're also unlocking the power of speakers and displays
to be part of your home awareness system.
So devices like Nest Mini or Nest Hub
can be your ears when you're on the road or on vacation.
We use on-device AI, sound detection AI,
to pick up critical sounds, like barking dogs or smoke
and carbon monoxide alarms, and we send an alert to your phone.
So now in one go, even those basic smoke alarms
become smart smoke alarms.
And when you get an alert, you have the option
to hear the alert or listen live to confirm the alarm.
Now, if it is an emergency, the Home Map
can directly connect you to the 911 call center closest to you,
regardless of where in the world you are.
So in those critical moments, the last thing you want to do
is scramble to find a local emergency dispatcher.
Now, these notifications will be part of the new home
app, which actually includes a new feature called a Home Feed.
It brings together all the notifications and snippets
from your devices, organizes them,
and highlights the important stuff.
So you can quickly see priority items,
or you get a general recap of the day.
So that's the new Nest Aware.
More affordable, with more features
and support for more devices.
OK.
Finally, let's talk about home connectivity.
You can have the best home setup in the world,
but it's nothing without great Wi-Fi coverage.
That's why we launched Google Wi-Fi three years ago.
And since launch, it has been the number one selling mesh
Wi-Fi system on the market.
And in 2019, it is a top selling router of any kind.
And it's a router that actually gets better over time,
with automatic updates to add parental controls,
improve performance, and enable Google's latest security
features.
Well, today, we're also updating the hardware with Nest Wi-Fi.
Now, the Nest Wi-Fi system is actually two devices.
The router plugs into your modem and creates a powerful home
network.
The Point expands your coverage.
Now, working together, they create
a single strong Wi-Fi connection throughout your entire home.
And our updated hardware and software
delivers up to 2x the speed and up to 25% better coverage.
So now the Nest Wi-Fi system only
needs one router and one point to cover around
85% of homes in the US.
Now, we're also solving a common problem you find with routers
today.
Most of them get hidden in a closet or cabinet,
because truthfully, they're pretty ugly, which reduces
their signal intention by 50%.
Nest Wi-Fi is designed to be out in the open, where it performs
at its best, with a range of colors that will naturally
blend into your home.
And of course it's really simple to use.
With the Google Home app, you can set up your Nest Wi-Fi
network in minutes.
And once you're set up, it's easy to share
your Wi-Fi password, manage your network,
set a schedule for the kids, or create a guest network.
Nest Wi-Fi also provides a foundation for your smart home
connectivity.
We're working with a growing list of partners to enable
seamless setup in the home app.
And with support for BLE and Thread,
we can talk to smart home devices locally,
so you don't have to buy a separate hub.
Stay tuned for even more partner announcements
over the next few months.
Lastly, we added a Google Assistant smart speaker
to the Nest Wi-Fi point.
So it does everything the Nest Mini does.
It plays your music with great sound,
provides answers to your questions,
and lets you control smart devices with just your voice.
So now you can broadcast a message to your kids
that it's time for dinner.
And if that doesn't work, try saying, hey Google,
pause Wi-Fi for kids' devices.
Pretty sure that'll work.
So that's the new Nest Wi-Fi.
Better coverage, smart home support, and that
Google Assistant.
It'll be available starting on November 4.
With new, affordable home solutions for audio awareness
and connectivity, everyone now can
start building their own helpful home.
Thank you.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Right now in Mountain View, it's 68 and sunny.
Today, it'll be sunny, with a forecasted high of 72
and a low of--
- Hey, Google.
Volume 10.
Hey John, can you come here for a sec?
- So you use this room to test.
- Right.
So we use this type of setting to really stress
the microphones.
- OK.
- Right now I'm talking to it this way,
but sometimes our devices are higher,
and sometimes they're lower.
- Because I might be down here.
- Yeah, exactly.
You know, because it's going to be in so many rooms,
it's sort of a privilege to-- you know, like we've got to -
this right.
You know?
I come from a family of immigrants,
and they all have accents.
And it's important for me to design products
that my parents can use and that it works for everyone.
At Google, everyone has their slogan
of what their passion is.
In our mind, it's actually be heard.
It obviously goes into the stuff that I work on,
but also speaking up when things don't feel right.
What this represents is an entire Google team's
voice of we got here because we worked together.
- You know what's kind of cool about that
is when multiple voices come together
to express sound in a coherent and beautiful way,
we call that harmony.
- There you go, harmony.
[LAUGHS] With Wi-Fi.
[LAUGHTER]
[END PLAYBACK]
SABRINA ELLIS: Hi.
I'm Sabrina from the Pixel team.
Now let's talk about how Google's ambient computing
vision comes to life when you're on the go.
Pixel 4 introduces entirely new helpful experiences
with more natural interactions.
It's completely redesigned, with a new look, a new color,
and a beautiful new finish.
And Pixel 4 includes camera features and sensors
that you're not going to find on any other phone.
Let's start there.
Five years ago, our Advanced Technologies Team
began its projects solely to investigate radar capabilities.
Radar has been around for a long time,
and it's still one of the best ways to sense motion.
It's precise, low power, and it's fast.
There were lots of exciting possibilities,
but here's what our first sensor looked like when
we started working on Soli.
Radar sensors have always been way too big to fit in a phone,
so we shrunk it down into a tiny chip,
but that still wasn't small enough.
So we had to shrink it down even more.
Pixel 4 is the first smartphone with a radar sensor.
It powers the new motion sense capabilities
for more human interactions with your phone.
For instance, Pixel 4 has the fastest secure face unlock
on a smartphone.
Because the process starts before you've
even picked up your phone.
Motion Sense prepares the camera when
you reach for your Pixel 4, so you
don't need to tap the screen.
It's so much faster and smoother.
Motion Sense can power down your phone
when you walk away and turn it back on when
you approach your phone.
It also lets you control your Pixel with simple gestures.
Swipe to skip a song, silence a call, wave hello to Pikachu.
And the Soli team is working on a wide range
of helpful new features, from gaming to personal wellness.
Here's a quick look.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- It is a very famous saying that any advanced technology
becomes indistinguishable from magic.
That's one of the things we talked about with Soli,
it's a magical sensor.
- I did it!
I touched it without touching.
- Radar has a lot of very interesting properties that
would be very useful for human-computer interaction.
You can shrink it down.
- All of this is now in there.
- That's right.
Yes.
It can sense through materials.
It's extremely sensitive for motion.
- And so we build this new interaction paradigm
based on the understanding of body language, distances,
and gestures.
- How can we make the language of interaction with technology
closer to what we do naturally in the real world?
- Then, of course, we really need
to test to distinguish between intentional and unintentional
gestures.
Just because I wave on top of the device
doesn't mean that I want to skip a song.
If I pick up coffee cup, this gesture
is very similar to a swipe.
And this is really important.
And I can do this, and it actually works.
With Soli, we can try to understand more
about the implicit behavior that happens around the device.
- The phone knows earlier what your intention is.
- Exactly.
Let's say the alarm goes off.
Really annoying.
As you reach, we can lower the phone.
The phone is more polite.
And then you can just do a gesture to shut it off.
[LAUGHS]
This moment of understanding each other
happens all the time between us, but it never
happened with technology.
What we can do with radar is to actually capture the aspect
of non-verbal communication.
And as a first step, it picks up forward motion senses
to get as close as possible to the intuitiveness
of verbal interaction.
- Silence.
[END PLAYBACK]
SABRINA ELLIS: Since the Soli sensor
can detect the environment around Pixel 4,
privacy had to be built in from the start.
You can turn motion sense on or off at any time.
And when it's on, all of the sensor's data
is processed right on your Pixel.
It's never saved or shared with other Google services.
And motion sense isn't the only way
we're making your phone interactions faster
and more natural.
The Google Assistant is now deeply integrated
into Pixel 4's OS and across your apps.
You can quickly open apps, search across your phone,
share what's on your screen, and a lot more.
The assistant can simplify multitasking too,
with a clean, new interface.
Check this out.
Just give Pixel 4 a quick squeeze.
Show me Maggie Rogers on Twitter.
What are her concert dates?
Share this with Vivian.
Reply, let's go see her.
Open Ticketmaster.com.
Search for Maggie Rogers events.
A key way we're making the Assistant this fast
is with an on-device version of our language models
that run on our data center.
So they can run locally, right on your Pixel 4.
This means the new Assistant uses a hybrid model.
It can respond to many day-to-day requests
on device, like starting a timer,
while connecting for requests like is my flight on time.
You also have new ways to manage your data.
Choose a time limit for how long you want your activity
data to be saved in your Google account,
or just tell the Assistant to delete
everything you said to it today or this week, and it will.
You're in control.
And you can get more details by asking, hey, Google,
how do you keep my data safe?
We're taking the same care to protect your on-device data
too.
With tighten Titan M and other security features,
last year's Pixel 3 scored the highest for built-in security
for a smartphone, according to Gartner.
We built Titan M into Pixel 4 as well
to protect your most sensitive on-device data,
like your passwords, your OS data, and now
your face unlock model.
Your phone has some of your most personal private information,
and we have a responsibility to keep it safe and secure.
Now, how many of you have tried a voice recorder app?
I know I've tried a few, thinking,
I'll be able to get organized by recording notes to myself,
interesting lectures, important events.
But then I end up with a bunch of untitled audio clips
that I really don't know what to do with.
So we created a new kind of audio recorder
that taps into our speech recognition and AI.
Let's see it in action.
We've had a Pixel 4 recording the show
for the past few minutes.
As you can see, with one tap, I can
get Recorder transcribing my words in real time,
as I'm saying them.
Now, to show this is live, it is now 10:44.
And it's pretty accurate.
This means you can transcribe meetings, lectures, interviews,
or anything you want to save.
Eric, backstage, is going to save this recording.
And now I can go into the Search Bar
and find whatever I'm looking for.
I can search for sounds, words, phrases.
Let's see all the times I've mentioned pixel
across my entire library of recordings.
The places where the word pixel are said
are highlighted in yellow in the Playback Bar,
so you can dive into the exact part of the recording you're
looking for.
It's pretty cool.
And you'll notice this phone is actually in airplane mode.
All this recorder functionality happened on-device.
Now, I want to take a minute to talk about Pixel 4's OLED
display.
DisplayMate has awarded Pixel 4 XL their highest score,
an A+ rating, together with a Best Smartphone Display Award.
In five key areas, like color accuracy and image contrast,
DisplayMate classified Pixel 4 XL's display
as visually indistinguishable from perfect.
Pixel 4 is also our first smartphone
with a 90 Hertz refresh rate.
And we've added some smarts.
The refresh rate adjusts on its own,
depending on what you are doing, so you
get a great visual experience while still
preserving battery life.
Pixel 4 brings together so many helpful new technologies
and capabilities.
And you'll get the best Android experience with Android 10,
and you're the first in line to get the latest
OS updates and features.
We also want to make sure you get the best experience out
of the box.
So Pixel 4 comes with three months of Google One
for new eligible members.
You'll get lots of premium features,
including Pro Sessions, for one-on-one virtual help.
So if you have a question about your settings
or want a few tips for the camera, we're there for you.
The new Pixel comes in three colors, Just Black, Clearly
White, and a limited edition called Oh So Orange.
It also comes in two sizes, both with the same features
and both available for preorder starting today.
Shipping starts on October 24.
And we're excited that people will
be able to find Pixel in even more places.
We're expanding our carrier partnerships.
So Pixel 4 is now available through every major US carrier.
Now, we didn't forget about the camera.
For the past three years, Pixel set the standard for smartphone
cameras with incredible capabilities like HDR+,
Super Res Zoom, Top Shot, and of course, Night Sight.
With Pixel 4, we're raising that bar yet again,
and it all starts with this little square, basically
a miniaturized camera rig right on the back of your phone.
You can see the rear, wide, and telephoto cameras,
a hyperspectral sensor, a mic for your videos
and Instagram stories, and a flash
that we hope you'll use mostly as a flashlight,
but it's there just in case.
But the hardware isn't what makes our camera so much
better.
The special sauce that makes our pixel camera unique
is our computational photography.
And who better to talk about it than Professor Marc
Levoy from Google Research.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARC LEVOY: Thanks, Sabrina.
It's great to be here.
There's a saying among photographers
that what's important to taking a great picture
is, in order, subject, lighting, lens, and the camera body.
It's their way of saying that it doesn't matter which
SLR body you use unless you get the first three elements right.
Well, here's a slightly different take
on this list, subject, lighting, lens, software.
So by software, I mean computational photography.
So what does that mean?
It means doing less with hardwired circuitry
and more with code.
I like to call it a software-defined camera.
It typically means capturing and combining multiple pictures
to make a single better picture.
One version of this is HDR+, the technology we've used
for taking photos on every Pixel phone.
When you tap the shutter button, we
capture a burst of up to nine pictures.
These pictures are deliberately underexposed
to avoid blowing out highlights.
We align them using software and average them, which
reduces noise in the shadows.
This lets us brighten the shadows,
giving you detail in both the highlights and the shadows.
In fact, there is a simple formula.
Noise goes down as the square root
of the number of images you averaged together.
So if you use nine images, you get one third as much noise.
This isn't mad science, it's just simple physics.
By the way, on the left is our RAW output,
if you enable that in the app.
There's something else about this list.
It says the lens is important.
Without quibbling about the order on the list,
some subjects are farther away than you'd like.
So it does help telephoto shots to have a telephoto lens.
So Pixel 4 has a roughly 2x telephoto lens plus our Super
Res Zoom technology.
In other words, a hybrid of optical and digital zoom,
which we use on both the main and telephoto lenses,
so you get sharp imagery throughout the zoom range.
Here's an example.
You probably think this is a 1X photo.
It's not.
It's a zoom, taken from way back here.
By the way, Super Res Zoom is real, multi-frame, super
resolution, meaning that pinch zooming
before you take the shot gives you a sharper
photo than cropping afterwards.
So don't crop like this.
Compose the shot you want by pinch zooming.
Also, by the way, most popular SLR lenses
do magnify scenes, not shrink them.
So while wide angle can be fun, we
think telephoto is more important.
So what new computational photography features
are we launching with Pixel 4?
Four of them.
First, live HDR+.
Everyone here is familiar with HDR+'s signature look and its
ability to capture extreme brights and darks in a way that
looks crisp and natural.
But even phones with good HDR solutions
can't compute them in real time.
So the viewfinder often looks different from the final image.
In this example, the window is blown out
on the viewfinder, which might tempt you into fiddling
with the exposure.
This year, we're using machine learning to approximate HDR+
in the viewfinder, so you get our signature look while you
compose your shot.
We call this feature Live HDR+.
So the industry's most successful HDR solution
is now real time and WYSIWYG, What You See Is What You Get.
Now, if we have an intrinsically HDR camera,
we should have HDR controls for it.
So Pixel 4 has dual exposure controls.
Here's an example.
This is a nice HDR+ shot, but maybe you would like to try it
as a silhouette.
So you tap on the screen and lower the Brightness slider
a bit.
That mainly changes the capture exposure.
Then you lower the Shadows slider a lot.
That mainly changes the tone mapping.
And voila, you get a different artistic vision.
Try doing that with any other cell phone.
So separate sliders for brightness and shadows
while you compose your shot.
It's a different way of thinking about controlling
exposure in a camera.
Second, white balancing and photography is a hard problem.
Mathematicians call it an ill-posed problem.
Is this snow blue, the way this SLR originally captured it,
or is it white snow illuminated by a blue sky?
We know that snow is white.
With enough training, so can the camera.
We've been using learning-based white balancing
in Night Sight since Pixel 3.
In Pixel 4, we're using it in all photo modes.
So you get truer colors, especially in tricky lighting.
Here's a tough case, an ice cave.
It's blue light, but not a blue person.
And here's what it looks like with Pixel 4's white balancing.
Third, we've continued to improve Portrait Mode.
With our dual pixel or split pixel technology,
we've always been good at portraits and at macro shots.
This year, we're computing depth,
again using machine learning, from both dual pixels
and dual cameras, which gives us accurate depth
farther from the camera.
This extends Portrait Mode to large objects
and stand further back portraits.
We also have a luscious new SLR-like bokeh--
that's the shape of the blur--
look at the lights on either side of her head.
We're doing better on hair and dog fur, which are hard.
And of course we still do great selfie portraits.
Fourth and last, we have continued
to improve Night Sight in many ways
and extended it to a use case that has always been
sort of a holy grail for me.
You could have taken this dusk shot using Pixel 3 last year.
Using pixel 4, you can take this nighttime picture
from the same viewpoint.
In the year since we launched it,
Night Sight has been called everything from fake
to sorcery.
Well, it's neither.
Think back to the mathematics that I
explained at the beginning.
Astrophotography is about taking longer exposures and more
of them, up to 16 seconds times 15 exposures.
That's four minutes.
But it's a single shutter press, and it's fully automatic.
By the way, you can't do this with a single long exposure.
In four minutes, the stars do move,
and trees wave in the wind.
So you need robust alignment and merging of multiple pictures.
And for a four-minute exposure, we do recommend a tripod,
or you can prop your phone on a rock.
Is there machine learning?
Yes.
We use it for white balancing, as I mentioned.
We also use semantic segmentation in all our photo
modes and have for years to brighten faces in HDR+,
a feature we call Synthetic Fill Flash,
to separate foregrounds from backgrounds in portrait shots
and to darken and de-noise skies in Night Sight.
Is there computational photography?
There's lots of that, too.
Digital sensors are prone to hot pixels that are
stuck at red, green, or blue.
The longer the exposure, the more hot pixels.
Our exposures are pretty long, so we
need some clever algorithms to remove those hot pixels.
By the way, that's our astrophotography field testing
team.
And yes, they sat still for a long time for this shot.
So where does this game stop?
What can't we capture using Pixel 4?
Well, we can capture the moon, which by the way,
required some fiddling with those dual exposure
controls I told you about.
And we can capture a moonlit landscape.
This is not daytime.
It's the middle of the night, and the landscape
is illuminated only by the moon.
See the stars?
But what we can't do, including on Pixel 4 today,
is capture both at once in the same picture.
The problem here is that the moon is blown out,
and the Marin Headlands at the bottom are just a silhouette.
The dynamic range, the difference
in brightness between a full moon and a moonlit landscape
is 19 F-stops.
That's 19 doublings, about half a million times brighter.
Way beyond the range of any consumer camera, even an SLR.
So is this scene forever impossible with a cell phone?
Remember what I said at the beginning
about software-defined camera?
Pixel is committed to making its cameras better
with software updates.
So stay tuned on this one.
To sum up, four new computational photography
features, Live HDR+ with dual exposure controls,
learning-based white balancing, wider-range portrait mode with
an SLR bokeh, and Night Sight with astrophotography.
Oh, and remember, you can use Night Sight for many things
besides stars, many things.
So go out there and be creative with Pixel 4.
Now it's my honor to introduce one of my favorite artists, who
has spent her career creating some
of the most memorable photographs of the last 50
years.
12 months ago, we gave her a Pixel,
and she's taken it all over the country
to build a new collection of portraits.
She also gives us suggestions and candid feedback,
which we've taken to heart in the tuning of the Pixel 4
camera.
So please welcome my friend, Annie Leibovitz,
along with our own Lily Lin.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LILY LIN: Thank you, Marc.
Hi, Annie.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Thank you, Marc.
Thank you, Marc.
It was a-- this is an extraordinary opportunity
that Google gave me.
And I've always been interested in the camera phone
and what it could do and what its potential was.
And Google came to me and said, we'd
like to support you in some sort of artistic endeavor,
and we thought of this project.
And I mean, it's obvious what's interesting about a camera
phone.
I mean it is you can carry it in your pocket, for example.
But go ahead.
I'm sorry.
LILY LIN: Oh, no.
It's great.
I know that you've been using the camera for over a year
now to shoot a collection of photographs, some of which
we're seeing the behind-the-scenes here.
Can you tell us more about the project?
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Well, we started, really,
with the Pixel 3.
And I was very suspicious and very careful with it.
And it really became an exercise in light and composition
and content.
And then when the Pixel 4 came along,
I was very impressed about how I relaxed with it
and just glided with it and used it and really
just enjoyed taking pictures.
I'm really towards the end of--
I mean, we're going to be doing more work,
but towards the end of the work that we were doing.
I felt like I was just beginning to get it.
And I just let the camera do the work, quite honestly,
and really enjoyed myself.
But the project, the people, I mean--
LILY LIN: Some of which we have here today, Lenore
and Chase and Idris.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Lenore and Chase, Idris.
Oh, it's incredible.
I mean, the people made me--
made the project.
And we made-- we really turned to people who care
and people who matter and people who are doing things that give
us hope and across the board.
And every single person that we photographed
is doing something that they care about what they're doing,
and they represent great parts of us
who are getting on with it.
LILY LIN: Change makers, I think,
is what I've heard you call them, true change
makers around the country.
So you've been traveling, seeing [INAUDIBLE]
you're traveling across the country,
shooting these amazing subjects.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: When Google first came to me, they totally
seduced me by saying, would you like
to drive across the country.
And that turned into, of course, going back to people.
So.
I don't know if you can-- if you see
what I did was I decided to take two photographs to create
a portrait.
And it's because it's hard to say
what you want to say about a person, especially
these extraordinary people, in one picture.
And so I made it a diptych and took two photographs.
For example, with Sarah Zorn from The Citadel,
there's a photograph of her almost like graduation day,
in her uniform.
But next to her is a photograph of the boots
she wore for four years, you know, every single day.
So.
LILY LIN: Well, so I have to ask.
I'm so curious, because you have access to the world's best
camera equipment.
So how is it different with this project, just having what
you have in your pocket, now?
What was that experience like?
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Well, I've been using, like everyone else,
camera phones for a while.
And the whole idea was can you use it to go out
and do work as a photographer.
And I was dying for this opportunity-- to be given
this opportunity by Google to develop the camera
phone for a photographer and how to use it.
And as I said before, it was a little bit of a rough start,
and then I just relaxed.
And I really totally enjoyed myself.
One of the last shoots, with Meg, the soccer player,
it really felt like we were just floating.
I mean, she was really a beautiful--
anyway, she was just a beautiful muse,
and I took these photographs that I wasn't really thinking
about the camera or thinking, just really composing.
And the light was beautiful, and she had that red shock of hair.
And it was just-- it was great.
LILY LIN: That's great.
Well, before we go, since I have you, I have to ask.
What pro tips do you have for all of us here
who want to take beautiful images like this
with the phone in your pocket?
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: Oh, it's all inside you.
I mean, you just go out, and you do it.
It's all there.
I think what's great about the camera phone,
I mean, my children use this camera.
And I mean, we all are using this camera.
And it's a brand new language.
And if you want to do something more specific,
then you maybe fall into another category,
and you're a photographer.
But it's just really great that this is available for everyone
to use.
LILY LIN: Yes.
The democratization of photography
is what I've heard you call it.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: I think it's great.
LILY LIN: So thank you so much.
And thank you.
I wish we had more time, but I know
you, as well as Nora, Chase, Idris,
are going to be sticking around.
So thank you for that.
Thanks for joining us on stage.
And guys, Annie Leibovitz.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: OK.
Thank you.
RICK OSTERLOH: Thank you so much, Annie.
Amazing project.
We're all huge fans.
That was awesome.
Well, as you've seen today, our vision for ambient computing
is to create a single consistent experience
across your home, your work, and on the go.
It's available anywhere you want it, whenever you need it.
With the introduction of our new Pixel phone, Pixel Buds,
Pixelbook Go, Nest Mini, Nest Wi-Fi,
we're taking a big step towards this vision,
with much more to come.
Now, we couldn't get to all the product experiences today,
so if you're here with us in New York,
there'll be a lot more product details to see upstairs,
in person.
And for those on the livestream, please go to the Google Store
online, see a lot more.
Thanks so much for joining us today,
and we'll see you again soon.
Thank you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[POP MUSIC PLAYING]