Android Director: ‘We Have the Most Accurate, Conversational, Synthesized Voice in the World’

Hugo Barra, on stage at Google I/O, unveiled the Nexus 7 tablet to the world. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Wired: Samsung already has S Voice and LG is working on its Quick Voice feature. So is Google introducing its own voice feature because it doesn’t want 15 different variations of the same sort of function on Android devices?

Barra: It is not. It’s simply an evolution of the Google search experience. All of the assets that we use — both the online and offline speech engine, as well as the speech synthesizer — those are all assets that our hardware partners can use to compose whatever experience they want. Our goal was simply to build the next-generation Google search experience. Voice in and voice out, and then a brand new feature called Google Now.

Wired: Is there a name for the voice that we hear in Jelly Bean?

Barra: Google Voice Search. It’s always been called Voice Search. It continues to be called voice search.

Wired: What does Jelly Bean say about Google’s view on the direction of mobile operating systems and devices, and the industry as a whole?

Barra: Some of the things that we did in Jelly Bean are representative of where we think the industry should go. I’ll just mention two.

One is the home screen experience. We did this with Android with the first generation of widgets — this notion of having an application space of your own where stuff appears and actions can be invoked, without having to dive into an application. People want that, people need that.

The second thing is task switching. There are all these awesome, specialized applications that exist today. I think there’s a specialization trend, by the way, in mobile. You use a lot more applications a lot more often, often for very simple tasks, so put those in the notification shade. Something as simple as calling back should not be three clicks away. It should be one click away. Bringing the application action value to the surface, when it’s needed, where it’s needed. We think we’re doing a lot of things that set direction for the industry.

Wired: Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, at this point, is on only about 7 percent of Android devices. The fact that Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean are so similar, is that going to make it easier for hardware partners to port their software over? Or will we see the same lag in adopting the latest software that we saw with Ice Cream Sandwich?

Barra: We don’t know. These are business decisions that our partners make, but we certainly are making it easier.

First, you are right that they are similar and that does, yes, make it easier. If you take a look at the difference between the two platforms, you’ll see that there is a smaller difference between Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich than there was between Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread.

But we are launching the Platform Development Kit, the PDK, for our hardware partners. It’s starting in beta. It’s really going to be full-on in the next release, but it’s already there. We want partners to innovate in parallel so that by the time we’re ready, they’re ready. I think that will shorten the cycle and that’s really the objective of the PDK.

Asus and Google teamed up to build the Nexus 7 tablet in just four months with a decided focus on consuming entertainment. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Wired: The Nexus 7 tablet its the first Jelly Bean tablet and it looks really different than any Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich tablets that are out there. The operating system stays in a portrait orientation. You even have an app tray very similar to what we see on our phones. Is this a signal to your hardware partners that says, “This is the style in which you should make tablets?”

Barra: It is a signal to the industry. We’ve done a tremendous amount of user research to understand what people want. But first, a few things.

We do think that this form factor is one that the industry hasn’t embraced as much as it should. This fills a very important gap. It’s a device that you can carry in a small purse or back pocket. Just walk around Moscone, and that’s what you’re going to see. It’s the device that’s totally cool to have with you in the subway or the bus, and then when you get up, you don’t have to put it away.

There’s a huge market gap that we’re filling with the Nexus 7, and we’re doing it really well because it’s a really powerful computer. It’s the most powerful 7-inch tablet the world has seen by leaps and bounds. In that sense, we’re setting a direction for the industry, or suggesting a direction for the industry.

As far as the user interface is concerned, we think that Jelly Bean is a much more modern UI for a tablet of this size. When it comes to the 10-inch size, that’s really going to depend on the product partners.

Wired: Are we going to see a Nexus 10?

Barra: This is where we’re starting. We’ll take it one step at a time. This is where we’re starting and we’ll see what partners do in the 10-inch form factor.

Hugo Barra, Android’s product management director. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Wired: What did the relationship with Asus look like? Did you just get a bunch of guys from Asus to come down to Mountain View, and worked together everyday? Or did Google design something, and say, “Hey, build this for us?”

Barra: I think it was about four months, and we did have them over and we also went over there ourselves. It was a lot of hard work at high intensity because of the short period of time. We really wanted to get something out here, but it was actually great to have a particular place in time where it was “If we don’t make it by then, it’ll no longer be available to us.” We wanted to launch something here at I/O and it was a lot of work.

Wired: Four months is a very short period of time. Did Google see the MeMO 370T at CES and turn that into a Nexus tablet? Or we’re you all looking for the right hardware partner, and just hadn’t found it until fourth months ago?

Barra: We didn’t think that someone had nailed the digital content device. I’m talking about a device that allows you to do movies, books, magazines and so on, but also gaming. Super high-performance gaming, with a gyroscope, a pretty powerful GPU and so on. We didn’t think anyone had nailed that in this form factor. We thought there was an opportunity, a gap in the world. So we spent a little bit of time talking to people until we found the right partner and when we did, it was full speed ahead.

Wired: Does Google need to convince consumers that the Nexus 7 is an entertainment device worth picking up? The price is right, the hardware and specs are right, and the content is there, but consumers haven’t traditionally seen Google as a place to buy digital media.

Barra: We’ve just built a new brand that didn’t exist a few months ago.

Wired: Google Play?

Barra: Yes, Google Play. We all know that new brands don’t make themselves. They require education and marketing. Android Market wasn’t an obvious destination for you to go buy a book. It really wasn’t. And therefore, yeah, we do have to make it known to people that’s a destination that will have the stuff that they want.

Google Play is Nexus 7 and Nexus 7 is Google Play. So which one is it that you are selling? Is it Google Play or the Nexus 7? Well, it’s really both. So hopefully that’ll work. And you know, page 5 of the Wall Street Journal, we had a full page ad [on Thursday]. We’re really serious about this.

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