Google I/O 2021 – Key Announcements

Product

Highlights / Hyperlinks to blog posts

Links to blogposts

Android 12 Beta 1

• Releasing the first beta of Android 12

• The biggest design change in Android’s history, rethinking the entire experience, from the colors to the shapes, light and motion. This includes (1) customisation with a custom color palette and redesigned widgets (2) redesigned notification shade with a crisp, at-a-glance view of your app notifications (3) faster and more responsive device  with better power efficiency

• Privacy Dashboard that offers a single view into your permissions settings as well as what data is being accessed, how often and by which apps. It also lets you easily revoke app permissions right from the dashboard.

Android 12 Beta: Designed for you

Google Search

• Reaching another major milestone in AI innovation, with Multitask Unified Model, or more affectionately, MUM. This new AI model combines an understanding of language with knowledge of facts or key attributes about people, places and things to find better and relevant information.

• Translate Filter in Google Lens so it’s easy to copy, listen to or search translated text, helping students access education content from the web in over 100 languages.

• About this Result provides details about a website before you visit it

Search, explore and shop the world’s information, powered by AI

MUM: A new AI milestone for understanding information

Google Maps

• Reducing hard-braking moments during your drive thanks to machine learning and navigation information

• Enhanced augmented reality Live View with helpful details about the shops and restaurants around you, how busy they are, recent reviews and photos.

• Our detailed street maps feature, which launched last August, will also soon be available in 50 more cities, including Singapore, by the end of this year. With the help of AI and our understanding of cityscapes around the globe, you can now see where pavements, crosswalks and pedestrian islands are, along with the shape and width of a road to scale.

• Live busyness information will now be expanded to show the relative busyness of an entire area.

• Tailoring our Maps recommendations based on the time of day and whether or not you’re traveling.

Get around and explore with 5 new Google Maps updates

[Mentions Singapore}

A smoother ride and a more detailed Map thanks to AI
[*tech behind hard-braking moments & detailed street maps]

Privacy & Security

• Quick delete in Search gives you a new, “quick delete” option to delete the last 15 minutes of your Search history with a single tap from the Google Account Menu.

• Locked Folder in Photos is a new passcode-protected space where select photos can be saved separately.

• Android 12 Privacy Dashboard with new, industry-leading transparency and permission features

• Location History reminders in your Maps Timeline

• Enhancements to Password Manager that allows you to (1) Easily change compromised passwords with Google Assistant (2) Receive automatic, proactive notification of compromised passwords (3) A new tool that makes it easy to import passwords from your files or other password managers”

More ways we’re making every day safer with Google 

Workspace

• Smart Canvas: A new experience that delivers the next evolution of collaboration for Google Workspace. New features include interactive building blocks—smart chips, templates, and checklists—as well as new pageless format in Docs and emoji reactions. We’re also bringing Meet closer to Docs, Sheets and Slides.

12 Google Workspace updates for better collaboration

Transforming collaboration in Google Workspace

Other announcements

Google Health

• Sharing a preview of an AI-powered dermatology assist tool that aims to help people research and identify common skin issues, with a wider goal of reducing the global burden of skin disease. Aiming to launch as a pilot later this year.

Using AI to help find answers to common skin conditions