😜 Google showed off
Pixel this and Pixel that and some more Pixel.
👋 Welcome to FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest.
In this edition
Google I/O highlights
Disney+ added nearly 8 million new subscribers
Two new studies show how podcasts are growing
Pixel phone, watch, tablet, AR glasses & more
Google launched its annual developer conference with a 2-hour keynote. For the first hour CEO Sundar Pichai and team showed of impressive software updates. For the next hour, they showed off new Google-made hardware coming this summer, fall, next year and sometime in the future (yeah, the AR glasses, we didn’t even get a name, just a Meta joke).
Above, you can watch a 12-minute version of the highlights or go for this slightly longer version (18 min.) from The Verge.
The most important things:
Pixel Watch (coming this fall). It has a round design, swappable bands, a “tactile” crown and a side button. Google says the Pixel Watch will not work with iOS devices—just Android phones. It’ll also run on an “improved” Wear OS 3 that features a “refreshed UI” with better navigation and smart notifications.
A new $449 Pixel 6a phone. It has the first generation Google-made Tensor chip, 6.1" OLED screen, in-display fingerprint sensor, 12.2MP wide and 12MP ultra-wide rear cameras. Pre-orders in July.
Also coming in July: $199 Pixel Buds Pro. New high-end wireless earbuds offer active noise cancellation, to tune out your surroundings, and a transparency mode to let ambient sounds in.
Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro first look. They will be officially launched in October, but we can already see the company is keeping the design introduced with the 6th generation with a back camera bar. They will ship with Android 13.
Pixel Tablet is also coming (next year). It will be Google’s second attempt after the failed Pixel C. The search giant said (and showed during the keynote) it is taking Android on tablets seriously and is optimizing it for larger screens.
AR glasses. No dates, no name. Just a cute video to show off the translation capabilities. Text appears on the glasses so that only the person wearing them can see and translates or uses speech-to-text to display what is being said.
Android 13. Will have expanded support for the RCS texting standard, Matter standard support and quick-pairing and more.
Google Wallet. Wallet is basically the same as Google Pay, except that Google says its Wallet app will also soon support digital IDs, including drivers’ licenses.
AI Test Kitchen. An Android app that lets users chat with Google's latest AI language model LaMDA 2 (only for select users).
If you don’t have enough, I recommend visiting this page by The Verge with all the big and small news regarding I/O. Or read this blog from Google (title theirs): 100 things we announced at I/O.
TECH
🇪🇺 The EU unveiled tough new proposals that would require online platforms to more aggressively screen and remove child abuse online. Privacy activists fear the new EU bill may undermine end-to-end encryption, which scrambles messages in such a way that they can only be viewed by the intended recipient. [CNBC]
🤷♂️ Tesla's stock is down 30%+ since Musk invested in Twitter, as investors worry about his personal debt and Twitter becoming a distraction. Musk’s ownership of Twitter could also alienate some potential Tesla buyers. [NY Times]
RELATED: Inside Elon Musk’s big plans for Twitter: quintuple revenue, grow the userbase to 931 MAU; cut advertising from 90% to 45% and make up the rest on subscriptions mainly and data licensing, pretty ambitious. [NYT]
AND THIS: Elon Musk would reverse the ban on Trump. Musk spoke at FT’s Future of the Car conference. He thinks it was not a good decision and it amplified Trump’s voice (clearly the opposite happened). “It’s a classic case of “engineer’s brain” in action”. [@daveleeft]
🥺 Sony and Nintendo say their consoles will likely be in short supply all of 2022. [WSJ]
🤔 Patreon released its first-ever Creator Census. Over 13,000 earning creators weighed in from 113 countries, in 18 languages. Video is the most popular primary medium on Patreon (used by over a third of creators), followed by writing and podcasts. [Patreon Blog]
📡 Starlink has around 150k daily active users in Ukraine. [@fedorovmykhailo]
ALSO: Starlink has gone mobile with a new Portability feature. It costs an additional $25 each month.[The Verge]
🛻 A review of Ford’s F-150 Lightning EV truck says it’s a great truck. It handles well, features a lot of cool tech, and will exceed the expectations of anyone who likes towing, hauling, or off-roading. [The Verge]
😵💫 Terra (LUNA) cryptocurrency has fallen by more than 99%, wiping out the fortunes of crypto investors. Here is a good explainer, if you are looking at this piece of news and thinking what the hell did I just read. [Bloomberg]
🥲 Apple is discontinuing the iPod. The first version was released on October 23, 2001. [Apple]
ALSO: Apple might switch the Lightning port to USB-C for the iPhone 15 in 2023. [MacRumors]
🤓 Airbnb is launching its biggest app redesign in 10 years, de-emphasizing search and instead nudges you to pick from 56 “categories”. [Fast Company]
😲 Apple, Google, and Microsoft agreed to adopt the FIDO standard and usher in a passwordless future. FIDO explained. [The Guardian]
🌐 Google and Meta’s new subsea cables will connect Africa to the global internet more robustly than ever. The good: Hundreds of millions of people will get great internet. The questionable: Google and Meta’s ownership are less clear and more worrying. [Rest of World]
🤪 Instagram will begin testing NFTs. [The Verge]
MEDIA
😎 Bild’s subscription strategy and years of testing showed it’s better to have a simpler proposition, now there is only one single offer of €7.99 with an introductory offer of €3.99 for a year. [INMA]
MY TAKE: Bild’s subscription offer evolution proves business strategies are meant to be challenged. [The Fix]
📊 Disney+ gained 7.9 million paid customers in the first three months of 2022, to stand at 137.7 million, up 33% year over year. Overall, Disney missed financial expectations for the quarter. Still, CEO Bob Chapek said Disney+ remains on track to hit 230 million-260 million subscribers by the end of fiscal 2024. [Variety]
👀 Netflix executives told employees its lower-priced ad-supported tier may come by the end of 2022. In the note to employees, Netflix executives said the advertising-supported tier would be introduced “in tandem with our broader plans to charge for sharing.” [NY Times]
👎 The role of TikTok and other social media apps in the Philippines election. The Philippines was once described by a Facebook executive as “patient zero” in the global disinformation epidemic. Little was done over the years either by the government or tech companies to deal with this, and now a dictator’s son is the new president. [NY Times]
👍 Revenue for hundreds of local news organizations went up in 2021. [NiemanLab]
📈 The world’s largest English-language news publishers now have more than 30m digital subscriptions between them. Top: 8.4M NYT, 3M WSJ, 2.7M Washington Post.[Press Gazette]
💰 Google is paying more than 300 EU publishers for news. [Reuters]
🎁 YouTube is launching gifted memberships in beta. [The Verge]
🇺🇸🇺🇦 The Washington Post is establishing a new bureau in Kyiv. [WaPo]
FROM THE FIX
1️⃣ How Vchasno is covering the war in Ukraine near the frontline
3️⃣ Sustainable journalism: view from Latin America
[ 📬 Get The Fix newsletter. Sign up here > ]
AUDIO
🤠 How do you get your podcast featured on Spotify? Spotify’s editorial submission form is now open so creators can potentially have their show amplified. Submission form here. [Anchor Blog]
😯 US podcast advertising revenue hits $1.4bn in 2021, projected to be $4bn by 2024. Podcast advertising revenue grew twice as fast as the total internet advertising market, according to the 2021 PwC/IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report (if you deal with audio, podcasts and ads, these slides are really insightful). [Variety]
📈 Nielsen published its Podcasting Today report with insights for advertisers. 56% of marketers in North America plan to increase their podcast spending over the next year. [Nielsen]
👏 Futuro Media and PRX win Pulitzer for Suave, a seven-part podcast. It was produced by Maria Hinojosa’s Futuro Media and PRX that follows three decades in the life of a man sentenced to life in prison as a juvenile. [Poynter]
🙌 Patreon revamps its app’s audio section. The audio tab on Patreon’s app is getting a filter. Intended to make podcast sorting and listening on the app easier, the filter will let users select or weed out unplayed, in progress, downloaded, or archived podcasts. [The Verge]
OTHER
📖 This children’s book about design should be required reading for CEOs. I wish I came up with that line, but it’s the original headline and I love it so much (because it’s so true :D). [Fast Company]
⚡️ Norwegian company Wind Catching Systems is developing a floating, multi-turbine technology for wind farms that could generate five times the annual energy of the world’s largest, single wind turbine. This increased efficiency is due to an innovative design that reinvents the way wind farms look and perform. [Fast Company]
❓ Poll: Is your faith in Google’s hardware ambitions restored?
🙌 Thanks. I used HandyPolls to create this poll (instructions).
Last poll results: When was the last time you read a book on tech & business? 40% want more book recommendations, 36% read biz books, 17% don’t remember.
🙏 And big thanks to Celine Bijleveld who helped me edit this newsletter. You can follow her on Substack here.