By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
The Google IO developer conference kicking off today, and some news coming out of it, including a partnership with Warby Parker, that is sending those shares higher by 16%. Joining us on the ground with the latest Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley. I know these things can be sort of a firehose of announcements, but give us some of the high points there, Dan.
00:27 Dan Howley
Yeah, Julia, fire hose might be underselling it, actually. We saw a ton of announcements from Google today. Uh, too many to really account, so we’ll just go over the top three, and the number one is how Google is kind of evolving search over time. Uh, they’re bringing more features to its main search, uh, uh, offering a new feature called AI mode that they were testing previously, but now is going to be available to all US users. You can think of it kind of as a chat GBT style version of Google search. They have a deep search where you can do a lot of research. Uh, there’s a number of features. Uh, up top with the Google Smart Glasses and Warby Parker, that’s why those shares are changing. Really, what they’re saying here is look, we have this operating system called Android XR. You can see a demo over here. This is where they would be doing live translation, which we saw some of on a demo onstage, but they showed off a working version of this during the announcement. Uh, it really does seem like an incredible product. The person who was demoing it showed off the ability to do this exactly looking around for directions, how it’s contextually aware of things of that nature. Warby Parker, Gentle Monster are two of the companies that they’re going to be working with, uh, as well as X-real. Uh, they have a prototype that they’ve already shown off or a product that they’ve already shown off using Android XR. Then we have that agentive AI that’s part of that AI mode where you’ll be able to do things like basically tell a product, uh, the search to go ahead and look for a specific product for you. Set up the price range that you want, the size you want, the color you want, and it’ll go ahead and basically buy that for you. It’ll go through the whole process up to the point where you would press purchase and then go ahead and do that. And then there’s also this idea of a, I just thought it was interesting, virtual try-on. So you’d be able to virtually try on clothes that you would see, and that’s what you’re seeing here where, you know, I could say, okay, show me a suit in blue. I like this one. Let me see what it would look like on me, and then it would be able to do just that. We saw a live demo of it as well. It seems really incredible. I think the one caveat to point out though is it doesn’t get sizing, you know, specifically when it comes to showing what it would look like on you. So a large versus a medium, you know, depending on your height and weight. So it’s not there yet, but when I spoke to Google earlier this week, they said that they’re working on those features down the line. So a huge number of announcements here at IO, and really this is Google’s attempt to reestablish itself or kind of show that it hasn’t lost step in search or AI.
05:19 Speaker A
Yeah, Dan, you’re kind of leading me where I wanted to head with you, which was the big question, Dan, hanging over the company, and we’ve talked so much with you about it as well, as this question of AI, and just what it means for search, Google’s bread and butter long term, given these emerging popular alternatives. I know we’ve certainly had plenty of analysts on the show who are bullish on the name, and they’ll certainly hammer home the point that Google is not staying pat. They’re not, you know, sitting still. They are innovating. But I’m just curious, high-level thoughts, what more line of sight you think we got into that very central foundational question today at this conference?
06:15 Dan Howley
I mean, clearly, they’re they’re moving this this kind of AI mode idea and AI overviews front and center, right? The AI mode is really just its arrival to chat GBT, to perplexity, those kind of chat-based conversational-like search engines that you have. That’s where it looks like Google may want to head. Now, the other part of that is the agentive AI where I was explaining how it could go through and help you purchase things or look up tickets for a Mets game, for instance. You would be able to go through and find a price that you want, it would find those for you. So it’s these two kind of elements that Google is really leaning into to get away from, not necessarily get away from, but to show that it’s advancing beyond just the standard search box. I think, you know, that leads to the question, okay, what does that mean for companies that depend on Google for those blue links, you know, whether it’s page views or servicing relevant information. You know, AI mode, one of the demos they showed was looking for restaurants. What does that mean for companies like Yelp and beyond that?
07:53 Speaker A
Thanks so much, Dan. Appreciate it.