Okay, Abner, we've had some interesting things that have happened the last few weeks. Most notably, we have a reveal date for Google I.O. Is it technically the second last week away? Yes, this week we got the usual teaser that Google loves to do. We have a puzzle, simple enough this year. that you say that actually you say that i'm going to interject you say that it was simple but i didn't make it past many of the islands on the game
Because I'm not going to lie. Yeah, the format is pretty similar. So compared to past years, it wasn't really a... Past years, it was just really hard to get into. But this one... The concept was simple. I found it quite difficult. But I will lie, and I will lie to our listeners and say that I wasn't paying full attention, when in reality I probably was, and it was a lot more difficult than I expected, and I do like puzzle games. But yes.
That was great in terms of like a game to reveal the date, but we have May 20th, May 21st as Google IO 2025. Yeah, two days. It's later than last week. We saw later than last year, at least. And usually it's more of an early May kind of thing. But this May 20 to 21st is just a bit later. It's actually the same week as Microsoft Build. So that's going to be interesting from a news diluge point of view. Their main keynote should be on separate days, I think. So that's something at least.
But yeah, it's Google's big show. Big consumer-facing show, at least. Yeah, we know the dates. We know some 90-odd days to it. It really kicks things off in terms of what announcements we can expect there. I mean, for me, this seems weird. I know we've spoken privately about this. I think that this seems...
like an early reveal to me. And I know that that's not actually the case, but I don't know why, but like to me, the end of middle of February feels really early to say, okay, we're going to have IO in May. And in some ways. it almost feels like we're on that road to it. I guess, I guess for a wrestling kind of comparison, this is like the road to WrestleMania. This is our road to WrestleMania.
I'm interested to see what happens with all of the reveals and stuff, because we've had quite a few big reveals already this year, right? And obviously we have... Yeah, it's... I mean... Well, it's an AI show that's unavoidable, but... The way that AI is shaping out, at least in terms of competition, they can't hold it until a few months. If it's ready, many of these companies are announcing it now. And that's absolutely the case with Google.
um like we saw last week we got a bit a lot of model releases um and gemini 2.0 flash at this point everybody has access to flash thinking which shows its thoughts and advanced subscribers have 2.0 Pro Experimental. So the gap between 2.0 Flash Experimental and when it entered public availability for everyone was about... two months maybe even less than that less than two months so with this fresh thinking and at least with pro-experimental
I think the stable releases are going to happen way before IO. I was about to ask you, yeah, I get the impression that there's, like you say, the open AI and perplexity, if I can say it, perplexity, and all the other players, they... I mean, they're going to put their foot to the gas, right? So they don't have an IO signpost to wait for. They kind of can do things as and when. Yeah. And again, Google is not, they're not going to.
It's a tough balance because you can use the stage to... really emphasize your announcements that's when you have the world's press even the mainstream press looking at you so that's your opportunity to make a big splash but It's funny when we say that model updates, they're a bit under the radar, so to speak, that they need to come out when they're ready just for everybody to stay competitive.
Yeah, so I think there will be big, flashy feature announcements for Gemini and new AI features at IO. Some will definitely be saved for that. Maybe... those towards the end of the year but I think in the more immediate term that's not going to dampen AI announcements, Gemini announcements from Google one bit.
Yeah, I agree with you. I do think that it's kind of like it's go time when things are ready. I know that obviously it's not going to affect most people using Gemini specifically. I know that the new models are definitely a lot better at context. The big one for us is probably, and obviously as we're speaking, as we're recording this, Android 16 has arrived. Definitely go check out the updates that we've done to Beta 2 on the website and our video.
deep dives into all of the user-facing features. But we're going to expect, obviously, ordinarily at IO, we expect releases to happen and information about future Android releases. But we have this confusing, almost dichotomy of... Android 16 coming earlier to account for the fact that Pixel's going to come earlier. And then we potentially going to be in a situation, and this is my hot take, I do not think we're going to get an Android 16 beta release at I.O. given the timeframe.
Like the timeline states we're going to have in the middle of March platform stability. I genuinely just think where, I mean, I want to get your opinion on this, obviously. Where do you think Android 16? in its entirety or if it's a beta release or whatever it happens to be, where does that fit into I.O.? Because it just seems like a really confusing mess that we're in this situation at all, even discussing it. So in terms of the timeline...
We got beta 2 on Thursday, February. March is beta 3. And like you said, platform stability. That's when user-facing behaviors, APIs, that kind of stuff are finalized so that app developers can start their final optimizations for the final release. April, beta 4 in April is the last, beta 4 is the last thing on the schedule of fishery. Beta 4, quote unquote, that's it. But Google Reefs opened the possibility for more near final releases in May. The words beta 5 don't appear anywhere.
That's why we're wondering whether anything's happening in May. Most likely there is. Even if it's beta 4.1, there will be something there. But in terms of major tentpoles... Google is leaving open the possibility of something in May. But given that the Q2 release, that's when it's going to happen, June, I think the going theory... Okay, so we expect the quarterly feature drops dictate that there's something in June, that there's a big release in June.
So that's why we think that Android 16 will be ready by then. But historically, there's always been some shifting that it might not be ready in time, that there's one more. of the old release, Android 15 release that month, and that we get it. We get the featured pixel drop, we get the Android 16 update a bit later, or even in the middle of June to account for that.
So with that in mind, if it's ready by June and what you're alluding to, it doesn't make sense for a big beta to come at I.O. Again, traditionally, there's always been a beta at I.O. It works up nicely because the big tentpole features of that year's Android release are announced on stage and then you get to try it on your device. It happened last year with Private Space.
Again, this is what usually happens, but given this accelerated beta timeline, I don't know if it makes sense anymore, or... But again, at the... And the other side of this, is Google going to start releasing these tentpole features? Again, we're recording this before we've seen beta 2. Are they going to release any tentpole features before they announce them on stage? That's highly likely, of course.
given the new timeline but I don't know it's like you said it's a mess and for all we know Android 16 is done by the time we hit I.O. I mean I Again, under the hot take, I would not be surprised. I'm going to put my money where my mouth is now. That Google just reveal the entirety of 16 on stage. Because obviously previously they'll have... They can't...
realistically, can Google wait until the 20th of May to effectively hold back these tentpole and these key features, the key user-facing features, whatever it is? Let's just use private space as an example. Can they do that that late into the cycle? Do you think they can? There's a superficiality to it in terms of it's all... If Google decides to hold things back, if they decide to hold back major tentpoles, yes, in terms of everything else is done, but just these key line features.
They've tested them to death internally. They know it's final. They don't really need the feedback. But they just want to reveal it. It's kind of like the pixel thing. Like pixel feature drops. They're never... feature drops always feature features that are not tested ahead of time they're usually more on the app level of course but there is I think it makes For a big reveal. And that's again. It's good for the on stage announcement. But at the same time. It is. The wariness. In terms of.
Look at last year's Android 15 announcement at I.O. That was barely anything. Private space was the highlight. And the other stuff was the theft protection stuff. It's... Google doesn't really tie big feature releases anymore with Android tentpoles. Again, this might be the year to change things, but looking at the past few years, not the most promising.
no like yeah it's a great point i think i mean my dream would be day off here we go like they they just ignore their own q2 release and just go boom here's 16 its entirety we walk we basically flash in
the full version of Android 16 on the day. That would be incredible. It would definitely let them get a Pixel announcement because we're not expecting any hardware at I.O. No. Because the rumors are that the... 9a launches a few months earlier and it doesn't make sense to do it so close to the flagship if we're assuming august again so maybe it lets them add a pixel presence so that could be something Yeah, it's a confusing mess, but it's a mess we will pick through and we'll find that...
Almost like the meat on the bone, if that makes sense. And I think over time, we'll get a clearer picture. Like I say, in that respect, it feels really early to be even talking about IO period because we're going to have those situations where things will just...
crop up but and like you say with with regards to gemini gemini is going to evolve over time and become this thing in in and of its own right and release when it's ready so io may i don't know maybe maybe io is is losing its its value within google's almost release schedule and maybe the pixel series is where things are going to happen in terms of like majority hardware and just be like keep that to the end of august and that encroaching upon io feels really really strange in general because
Usually we're having, what, would it be five or so months between IO previously and Pixel made by Google? So having three-ish. Yeah, four or five months. Three or four months is weird, but... Yeah, I'm excited. Obviously, last year was my first year on the ground at IO and it was a fantastic event to go to. It's a fairground. Yeah, I mean, it's the ultimate fairground if you're a Google fan like we are and hopefully you're out there listening.
Online registration is available right now, so I'm sure things will develop over time. But it's just an interesting situation all around because, like I say, my gut instinct is we might not get... a major beta update like we have done in the past and see all these major features i just think it's just going to be a little bit it's going to be i i just android 16 is probably going to be scaled back anyway in terms of like it's released because we have that later one in what
Q3 so yeah there's some interesting questions maybe they announce Q4 yeah maybe they announce the beta for that release maybe they announce the beta for that at that release and talk about features that are going to come in the second update, that could be something that happens. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be new for everyone. It's definitely new to us. And yeah, as well, if you've managed to finish that Prism Shift game...
and you have tips to finish some of the levels, by all means, send them to me because I couldn't finish it myself. Luckily, if you completed it right, and I think Ben completed it on the team, but I just couldn't do it. I was not competent enough to complete it. But that kind of leads me to something else that I want to talk about because I spend a lot of time on YouTube. I make content for YouTube. And there was a report earlier this week, sorry.
I was going to say the end of last week, that's not right, that YouTube on TVs, at least in the US, has now actually surpassed mobile as the primary device in terms of watch time, which I think is incredible. i mean it mirrors my own usage i mostly watch youtube on tv but yeah does youtube and google specifically have this like huge plan for to bring tv youtube onto tv is like this big
an even more core component of their kind of business model? I don't know. Do you use YouTube on TV? I'm not really sure. No, I watch Dune on my smartphone during the pandemic. Also Tenant, but I actually wanted to see Tenant on a big screen. Anyways, yeah, it's televisions as the main screen. That's something that Google has been harping on. And the thought that I got this week was...
YouTube for most of us has really become like those broadcast channels, what the broadcast channels were to people decades ago. early 2000s, say, the broadcast channels, cable channels, still had some huge relevance in the US. And of course, it started from how there used to only be like three channels or whatever.
uh further back but then we've got stuff like cable and uh all just all the channels it's interesting how that has shifted in my perception i kind of thing like just putting youtube on in the background or finding something needing wanting to watch something just opening youtube that's so much more that's such common behavior at this point and This idea of watch time and TV becoming the primary device, it makes sense in that regard. I am the kind of person who...
When I first had a smart TV, I mean, I had a Chromecast anyway, but when I had a smart TV with applications installed on it, I had the full YouTube application. I would go there more often than I would go to traditional channels. And in the UK, we do have cable, but where I lived, it was satellite TV. We had Sky TV, which is probably one of the biggest providers in Europe.
And I would go to YouTube before I would go to Sky TV, which I think then, back in the 2015 era, that's probably a huge shift in usability. And I'm guessing a lot of people out there who... maybe don't have an aerial in their home or don't have cable or satellite, wherever it is, but they have internet. The first thing they'll do is go to an application on their TV as opposed to try and tune it and get local. Terrestrial channels, yeah. Yeah, get terrestrial channels.
And I get the impression that, especially in my age group, I guess I'm technically a middle-aged millennial, so work that out as you will. Most of us probably will... deviate away from traditional tv in terms of like youtube like i want on-demand programming 95 of what i watch is on youtube or on other services like netflix or amazon prime tv and i feel like
It almost, this information that people, the greater watch time, I mean, I'm guessing it's very different on mobile and it's definitely different to the data that I'm seeing on the back end of the 9to5Google YouTube channel is that... people still predominantly use their mobile phones to watch the videos. We can't see the fact, we can't very often, unless I haven't delved into the details enough.
I can't differentiate between someone watching on TV and their watch time versus someone's watch time on mobile. But someone probably will correct me if I'm wrong there. The biggest thing for me is that YouTube is, like you say, it's become a... It is channels, isn't it? You go to a channel, they've used the language of old TV, isn't it? It's so hyper-specific. Like you mentioned on demand, there's a different industry term for on demand. But another definition of it is you can...
find your interest so specifically. In a way, you could never do that with channels. The specificity of finding what you subscribe to, accessing that on the bigger screen. It's really so content almost personalized for you in a way that's never been possible before in the history of this television and the movie industry. The hyper-specificity. getting different specific world points of view. It's a basic thing that technology has allowed and this approach is winning out.
Yeah, it's interesting. I'm interested to see what Google and YouTube have in terms of like in store for like the TV side of things. Because obviously we don't have YouTube TV in the UK.
This service is, like you say, it almost apes and mimics cable TV in that you can pick and choose specific things. Am I reading into that right? I don't really... pay too much attention to it because i don't have access to it but no that's a very good point it's like youtube how it's youtube it's interesting youtube tv does not inherently does not scale as a business
Because getting into every single country to, let's say my Google Fi, it's getting into every country and striking a deal with so many partners in that country, it doesn't make sense. Or it's just so complicated to do it. Honestly, I'm always surprised that it's possible in the US, that this business makes enough sense to offer it even in the US. But here we are, 8 million subscribers or something.
But yeah, the YouTube TV is the analog to what YouTube is, I guess. If you want to put it that way. Yeah, I mean, but it does make sense to be in the same places where people are. already accessing their subscriptions and spending a lot of the time. I mean... According to this information, this latest information, a billion hours of YouTube content is being consumed on TVs daily alone. That is insane. Absolutely wild.
scale that up across every other platform and factor that in globally as well. Like clearly YouTube is the, it must be the biggest video. I mean, it is, it's pretty obvious that it is the biggest video viewing platform period. Like that's probably ever existed and ever will exist at this point in time. And it's free, let's not forget that. And, I mean, amongst all the other things, YouTube Shorts, all that kind of stuff, I think...
It is a strange time, I guess, for these traditional media partners that they have. Like you said, I can't imagine YouTube TV scales well across the board globally, if I can say it, that we just have this situation where... I guess there's almost like a firebreak. I would love to have YouTube TV here in the UK, but I know that there is a stranglehold by Sky TV that I mentioned before, and there's no way that they're going to allow...
unless they made their services available on YouTube TV as part of a subscription fee, but they would rather take 100% of that cut as opposed to a percentage. It is still impressive to me that they still are hitting these figures, despite the fact that...
in air quotes, traditional TV is dying. But I think as smart TVs have increased and things like the Google TV streamer, I think more people are probably going to find their way onto YouTube as their primary entertainment option. And even people of certain age groups like my parents are using YouTube more than ever. So yeah, it's great to see. But it also comes at a strange time because merely 24 hours later, Apple announced that they're finally bringing Apple TV.
They've already had it on Android TV since 2021. Android TV to Android phones and tablets, which again is a strange but interesting move, especially from a company that traditionally has kind of, well, in marketing terms, treats Android like... second-class citizens yeah so like you said 2021 was when it came to google tv his apple just has really been putting apple tv
Plus, anywhere it can. Striking deals with Amazon Prime channels, with Xbox, all the game consoles, small TVs. There are apps for Apple TV. But in mobile, the suggestion... Use... Case has been using the website tv.apple.com and if you want putting the PWA on your home screen it hasn't been a good experience especially with
I'm a major league soccer in the US. That's how you watch soccer. It's just not a good experience. And now there's finally an app, a traditional, straightforward app that's... to me has been pretty good to you to access all the TV Plus streaming and MLS if you buy that subscription. It's a huge finery because... At this point, I think Apple TV is really good at sci-fi stuff. They have so many good sci-fi programs. I think the new HBO in that regard.
television series premiere television all that so yeah this app it's pretty good it's it's weird it it has have you had a chance to use it because it has a lot of material three elements like toggles and the bottom bar. But to me, it distinctly feels like an iOS app. More so than, well, there's Apple Music too.
Yeah, I find it strange. I haven't used it because I'm not an Apple TV subscriber. And I haven't. I used the free... You're on the air whenever we are. I've had free trials to watch Silo and a few things like that. Yeah, like I've done that in the past and sometimes you get offers here in the UK in the supermarkets and things. So sometimes I just use those. There is a lot of it. This is the strangest thing.
So we've had YouTube saying that they are seeing incredible growth on TV, and mobile has predominantly been the place where people have watched things. I mean, I... I'm guessing that most people still watch on mobile, like short form. And now we're seeing Apple have had some, clearly they have some incredible TV shows. They've just not had the growth that they need. They're like a...
They're like a minnow in the ocean, effectively, in terms of streaming. And they've clearly understood that Android TV was a place they needed to put their content. And now they finally bit the bullet and said, well, we'll make an Android app. for phones and tablets because they know that without this reach of Android being so global and being such a big platform that their service will die. And I'd be surprised if Apple sees huge.
uptick um on android but hey a million people is is a million people more than they had previously but yeah it's at the end of the day i just I don't think Apple TV Plus is a good enough lock into the iPhone. It's a streaming service. People have an expectation of how you use a streaming service. You can get an app on all your... devices. I just never thought it made sense as a lock-in. Is there enough? I don't think there's enough content. This is not a platform like...
Netflix or even, I mean, YouTube is a bad example because YouTube is, there's a lot of creative, sorry, independent content creators on there, which I think is, it's never, no one's ever going to be able to compete with that because like you say, it's niche interests. are going to like surpass the fact that people are going to watch a TV show for six hours. Like I do not think Apple TV has enough. And I think that the MLS thing is.
I'm going to be honest with you, I would rather not watch MLS because even though I am a football fan or an American Friends soccer fan, MLS standard is so bad that I just don't want to watch it. Just being honest, I'm sorry for anyone who is an MLS fan out there. That is never, ever going to entice me enough. I would rather do the route of take my free trial, watch all of the content and just ditch it, like never pay a penny if I can.
And that's what I would, if I were someone who cared about what Apple would do, and I would be worried that their platform doesn't have enough content that is going to make people spend money. Like you say, am I going to continue to pay? whatever it is, $9, $10 a month, £10 a month to watch potentially 10 shows. I don't think there's enough on there. And I'm interested, I would be interested to see how...
how the downloads kind of rack up because I went to go look at the Play Store before we recorded and apparently 50 million of you out there have downloaded the Apple TV app across the platform. Because they use the same listing. Oh no, it's TVs. They use the same listing as... when they put it on all the android tvs google tvs that kind of stuff so it had a natural boost so to speak it didn't mention speaking of the play store google is advertising the heck out of this
It's featured on the front page of the Play Store. Google had a blog post about the app coming, which is interesting for me. You don't really see... that anymore this x so and so app comes to android that's so five years ago uh so that was a funny do you let's do a thought experiment do you think
because I know that this was one of the key sales pitches for the original iPhone, but do you think Google would have this, sorry, Apple would do the same for Google now to say, say they did for, I don't know, for whatever stake it was, all of a sudden. youtube was not available on ios do you think do you think they would do it no let's let's just pretend it doesn't exist let's pretend that uh
This is an Apple TV situation. I genuinely do not think Apple would even remotely acknowledge the fact that YouTube was arriving on iOS. I think they will do it for TikTok. I think both companies will do a huge...
Oh, I see. Yeah, like I think they'll roll out the red carpet for TikTok when that comes back because of where it is in the download charts. But I genuinely do not think that Apple would return the favor and have blog posts and... great prominence on their app store for youtube if suddenly it disappeared and came back a wee bit hard to see that but if it was ever removed for whatever reason that's sheer pandemonium you like
We just talked about its importance on TVs, its importance on mobile is even more. So that said, there's no YouTube app on Vision Pro. There's still no Google apps on Vision Pro, annoyingly. um i really just want chrome and my tabs to sync but i think the lighting on the wall there is that vision pro isn't sustainable isn't big enough a platform for google to invest its time in and to
I'm sure they're saving all the XR work for their first party platform at this point. I think that's maybe once Android XR is out in the world, maybe that's when they start.
uh building vision pro stuff but at this point not yet um yeah but you you raise a good point there though that you probably you haven't even said out loud when android xr is fully available out there in the world we're going to have an apple tv app but vision pro is not going to have a youtube app so technically who's winning there i think if you want to watch severance in in glorious 4k
in wherever you are with your headset on, you're going to do that on an Android headset because you can just switch to YouTube when you're done. I have to say, not to make this more about Vision Pro, but watching Severance on Vision Pro has been one of those worthwhile experiences to me. It's not that the show is optimized in any way or takes... Advantage of 3D-ness, but it's just having a miniature theater, which Android XR will offer too. A faux theater environment is pretty good, honestly.
The demo I've seen, I think they've shown this for Android XR, but you're basically in like a private theater, like one of those, if you have a mansion or something. You have a private theater and that's what Android XR is going to offer. Interestingly, it's part of the Google TV app and all other apps like YouTube and I think other streaming services.
will be able to push their content into that viewer. So Google TV will be a key-ish app on Android XR. Yes, and I think, yeah, I think... it's one of those things it's a boon for android for a change which is usually not something that happens all the time i think it's while i'm a bit indifferent to apple as a company and i say that someone who uses a lot of apple products for like work related things
I think this is good. I think this is finally one of those things where Apple has listened because they realize they need Android. They need Google just as much as Google needs them in that respect. Services. which I think they may be learning a few lessons about that with Apple TV. I don't think necessarily it's been the success that they hoped it would be, even though critically they have some fantastic shows. Highly recommend Slow Horses.
It's probably one of the most realistic depictions of, I'd say, Englishness on screen that I've seen. And Gary Oldman, fantastic actor. Yeah. I've digressed too much, but yeah, I think... It's one of those things. The battle for your living room is its own battle. And I think YouTube's won on portable screens probably. unless you're a certain age group, in which case TikTok is probably the number one. But yeah, I think that kind of...
Nice and short and sweet. We've had some good things to talk about. We're really excited for IO. We have Android 16 Beta 2 coverage over on site now. If you haven't already seen that, definitely go check it out. And we'll talk about it next week properly. We will talk more about Android 16. on the podcast, and we may have a special guest on that one as well. So yes, really excited to delve into that more and definitely delve into IO and all the machinations of that.
But I just want to say thanks for joining me again this week, Abner. I appreciate your time and I appreciate you out there for listening. This is episode 41 of Pixelated and we'll be back very, very soon. See you next week. Bye.