[MUSIC PLAYING]
LAURENCE MORONEY: There's this great technology
available in Android called Google Now,
and I'd love to tell a little story about it.
Last night I went to a restaurant in Japantown,
and I just swiped onto my phone, and I
saw all these great things that were going on all around me.
There was this museum I could visit.
There was the menu for the restaurant
that I was actually in.
There were reviews of that restaurant,
and thankfully they were good reviews because I discovered it
after I was in there.
And there's all this great stuff that Google Now
will actually give you.
But today I'm going to be speaking
with our partner who, this morning had a great keynote.
And one of the things that stood out
was that, while my smartphone was already smart,
you're working on things to make it even smarter.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: I mean, don't get me wrong,
I love my smartphone.
I think they're getting smarter over the years.
But I think the motivation was to say, look, we really want
the technology to work for you.
Can we make the phone do more of the work for you
so then you can get on with your life.
If you think about it, that sounds crazy and ambitious,
but we feel like we've kind of taken
a few early steps towards that.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Take moon shots, right?
And some of the things you've been doing about that,
the way I understand you've been thinking about it
is that you think really in terms of context,
and the things that are around you, and answers to the things
that you might want to know, and then actions that you can take.
Can you talk us through that process?
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: You've been paying attention
to the keynote.
that's good.
LAURENCE MORONEY: It was hard not to, it was awesome!
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Now look, if you think about it,
it sounds super cliched, super obvious, but mobile changes
everything in terms of how you find information.
How you act on it.
And then when you think about it-- OK
that's the department of obvious-- but then
if you unpack it, actually there are three things going on here.
One is, of course, the fact that your phone
is with you all the time.
Take my Disneyland example from the morning.
The fact that you're there is enough of a cue
that you need certain things.
You don't have to actually spell it out.
You don't have to go to a box and spell out,
oh I need X, Y and Z. So the phone
has a lot of this implicit context.
Context is the new black.
There's a whole bunch of information
that you should be able to tee up.
Your smartphone should be able to tee up
without you having to sweat.
So that's one key insight, and that's when we started saying,
well what are the kinds of context where we can help?
A place is certainly one of them,
like your in Japantown example.
But then, sometimes, the context is in your head.
So in my case, for example, I love cricket,
and I watch the World Cup.
I was maniacally focused on that.
And so any information around that
I don't have to spell it out.
Give it to me.
So that's another context we think about.
And then, I think, the other kind
of context we start to think about is time.
So the fact that around Thanksgiving you
need certain things, or Halloween you're
looking up pumpkin patches.
So how do you really bring a lot more information, without you
having to spell it out, is our key motivation for this.
And then of course it gets to answers, and actions.
LAURENCE MORONEY: And the context of places,
it's not just that this place is in this location.
If it's a restaurant you've got the opening hours,
you've got the menus, you've got all that kind
of stuff, which is--
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Exactly.
LAURENCE MORONEY: --very useful.
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: I mean, nobody thinks about, oh, I'm
in this lat long.
You're actually saying, oh this is a restaurant,
or this is a mall.
At the mall you want the directory,
at the airport you want the terminal map.
In some sense it's like you're trying
to get stuff done in a place.
You're not just there for the sake of it.
So how are you going to get-- help you get stuff done?
LAURENCE MORONEY: And it's funny you mentioned the cricket World
Cup, because it's a great example.
I was in Australia back in January.
And I didn't know about the cricket World Cup.
And I'm from Ireland and I heard that Ireland were going
to be in the cricket World Cup.
So I googled for, like, Ireland and the cricket World Cup.
And then Google Now started giving me
all this information, like when they were going to play,
and the games that they won, and the games that they lost.
It was really enriching, and it was really
delightful to actually have it.
So some of the other things that you spoke about now.
Some of the future that you we're
talking about with Google Now.
This Google Now on Tap, what's that
going to be bringing to us?
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Not beer.
But the idea was simple, which is saying,
look, like I was saying, How can we bring you
answers and actions in context.
But then, if you think about it, the context
is not just places, time, and interest,
but very often, the context is what
you're doing in that moment.
You are making dinner plans, or you're talking about a movie.
In that context, in that specific moment,
what do you need.
So we're kind of saying, OK, how do we take this assistance that
were starting to build with now, but then put it
to use in that precise moment?
And that's kind of idea behind Now on Tap.
LAURENCE MORONEY: I liked your Disney example,
instead of just telling me what I can do in Disney,
its also got information like, how long
the line is for this ride.
That's really, really handy stuff.
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: And with Now on Tap,
the other thing that's interesting
is, we started out thinking, oh, we should get you
quick answers, like, you and I are talking about a movie,
give you the movie information.
But with user studies, we actually
found another use case.
So one of the things people said is,
oh, I have another thing that I'm
super annoyed with smartphones, which
is, I'm reading something-- actually
this just happened to me-- I was reading
some article about free-range parenting,
and then I have to come do this.
And so I have two choices now.
Either I lose track of it forever,
or I just fuss with my phone right
before I come here, and take 15 steps,
and add this to my calendar, or whatever else.
So one of the things we're saying
is, in that moment can you just put a single button push
and just say, hey, Google Now, get this back to me
when I can read it.
When I have the context of reading it.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Yeah, like with the Hugh Laurie example,
You were looking into him and you held it down--
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Its just a quick question.
I don't want to have to go through 15 steps just
to get a quick question answered.
LAURENCE MORONEY: --And it was really funny,
because when I was watching your keynote, and I was like,
I know Hugh Laurie from somewhere.
And when you push that, and then there
was a little icon of an old British TV show,
called "Blackadder" and he was in that
and I was like, ding! that's where I know him from.
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Exactly, sometimes you just
have to see it for a couple seconds.
Actually this happened to me, so I always get confused between--
I still am confused-- between Helen Hunt and Holly Hunter,
that always trips up--
LAURENCE MORONEY: Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter,
yeah I can see that.
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: They're like two Hollywood actresses,
and I was like, which one is it now, on an article.
And I was like, OK let me tap on Holly.
And they said, oh yeah, it's the other one.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So this is great stuff
for like, the end user.
How about for developers?
What kind of goodness do we have?
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: That's the pretty cool thing here.
I think for developers, there's a couple things.
One, your app, you don't have to change anything.
That's why we're using the platform
API to make this work, which is the reason we have to roll it
out in M, Android M. But the other thing is, like,
for "Tomorrowland," or for restaurants, or whatever,
if you have an app that can get something useful
done for that kind of a use case,
you can start surfacing here, which is pretty cool.
It's a new way, of course now, today, you
can surface on Google Play, Google Search as well,
this is a third way that you can kind of reach users.
LAURENCE MORONEY: So if your a domain expert in something
like, coffee shops that have great latte art,
you can build the app around that,
and then get surface to use this through Now on Tap,
if you excuse the pun.
That's pretty good.
And when can we expect to see this?
This is an Android M?
APARNA CHENNAPRAGADA: Yes, It will roll out
with Android M in a couple months.
We should see some updates to the developer preview as well.
LAURENCE MORONEY: Nice, so lots of great stuff
to look forward in Android M. Google Now on Tap
is one of them.
I'm really excited for that, thank you so much
for this Aparna.
Folks, download the developer preview for M today.
You won't have the Google Now on that yet,
but it's coming very, very soon.
So thanks, Aparna.