Google – Chronic affliction.

Google still hides its light under a bush.

• Google held its Made by Google 2023 event where it once again demonstrated some great innovation which would work much better if it was in a device made by Samsung device rather than Google.
• However, both companies continue to be afflicted with chronic engineering disease meaning that Apple will remain pretty much unchallenged.
• Google launched the much-leaked Google Pixel 8, 8 Pro, Watch 2 and new colours for the Pixel Buds Pro that largely underwhelmed on hardware although the new screens on the Pixels are especially bright.
• There is also a new Tensor G3 chip although Google omitted to mention how much of an improvement the new hardware represents underlining yet again that Google is not a hardware company.
• Instead, Google allowed the software to speak for itself and here a series of exclusive features both make these devices shine and underline what a wasted investment they represent by limiting them to Pixel devices.
• These include 7 years of software support and updates, substantial enhancements to the digital assistant using Google’s generative AI models, and as always, image processing.
• The new AI assistant will be able to take accurate dictation running on device as well as integrate with Gmail and Docs and act very much like a smaller version of Microsoft’s CoPilot with the benefit of it not costing $30 per month.
• However, where the device really shines is in image processing with some really impressive new features.
• One of these is called Magic Editor which allows objects to be moved and resized within a photo which also enables the background to be changed such as the colour of the sky.
• Another is called Best Take which takes multiple photos of a group shot and then enables the faces to be changed from one shot to another to enable the best face from each shot to be composited into the group photo.
• Another feature is called Audio Eraser which removes unwanted background noise from videos as well as an off-device feature called Video Boost which will automatically improve videos uploaded to the cloud.
• It is important to note that the demonstrations all featured images and videos where the contrast between the subject to be edited and the rest of the photograph was very high.
• This makes it far easier for the AI to strip out the subject from the rest of the photograph or video and in my experience, when the contrast is lower, these sorts of features do not work nearly as well.
• Despite this drawback, the features that Google demonstrated are the best I have seen on any device and far outstrip anything that Apple has to offer.
• However, these features will not cause Apple to lose any sleep because they will only be present on devices that ship in such tiny volumes that they will have zero impact on the purchasing decisions of smartphone users.
• This is where Google has been getting it wrong for years and it continues to labour under the idea that it can challenge Apple.
• The reality is that it has no chance, but if these features were available on Samsung products, then it would have a much better chance of having some impact.
• The same is true for Samsung which also labours under the same idea and continues to produce software for its devices that is easily outstripped by Google.
• I have argued for years that the best chance of mounting a challenge to Apple would be created by Samsung and Google working much more closely together with Samsung building the hardware and Google the software.
• Instead, each company continues to do both, resulting in suboptimal devices in either hardware or software.
• Both of these companies continue to be afflicted with engineering disease (see here) and there is no cure anywhere in sight.
• Consequently, Google will continue to earn a negative return on these excellent new features as its hardware volumes are likely to remain so low that it will be losing significant amounts of money in hardware.
• Samsung is also forgoing the opportunity to grow market share against Apple making Apple the real winner from these afflictions.
• With no cure in sight, Apple looks set to continue chipping away at the high end of the Android market.
• Hardware is a rounding error in Google’s numbers but the more Android users defect to Apple, the less time they will spend in the Google Ecosystem which will cost Google in terms of opportunity.
• The valuation of both Apple and Google look pretty full, but if I were to delve into this area (which I am not at the moment), Samsung is the one I would be looking at.