Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Kara Tsuboi welcome to the future of a show where we take a look at the biggest companies and what's in store for them in a year ahead right now i'm joined by casey newton senior writer who covers google big company obviously Casey what are your thoughts in 2013 what do you think that company and you as the beat writer are really going to be focused on well I think we're going to see a ton coming out of Google in the next year and the first thing that I would probably mention it would be there futuristic Google X Division oh that sounds so cool it is they're working on two things that you've probably already heard about one of which is google glass those are the wearable computers that kind of give you a heads-up display of the world around you and in the first part of 2013 developers who pre-ordered them earlier this year are going to get their hands on them so they're going to be able to write their own software for them try all kinds of things do you expect that they'll hit the public market then later know it chances are we won't see them be available to consumers in 2013 but but we are going to get a lot closer oh that video is so compelling whenever you watch the Google glass stuff absolutely and remember this is also the same division that's working on self-driving cars google has gotten a lot of legislation passed this year that lets them drive those cars on roads in various states state of Nevada being one being the most recent and so I think we're going to see a lot more out of that very cool google also is very busy in the hardware division I'm sure you're going to see some developments in that section absolutely so you know we're in the holiday season now Google just refreshed its lineup of Nexus products these are the Google branded tablets and smartphones that it makes with other manufacturers so there are some real questions out there about how much traction are these devices going to get we're seeing the first 10 inch Nexus tablet is that going to sell be competitive with the iPad time will tell but expect to see Google release new versions of those next year and continue to try to compete with its many many competitors and that's based we can't talk about Hardware without obviously talking about google phones and i think i read somewhere that more people are now using android than even iOS these days that's right android market share has really been on the march this year it is the fastest growing operating system in the world and that poses some interesting questions for 2013 historically developers have been building for iOS first so you see a lot of the best apps coming to apple devices first but as more and more people buy android devices the question as well our developer is going to say you know we're going to start building for Android first and that's definitely something we're going to be watching in 2013 now it's hard to talk about Google without talking about what even Google started as and that's search I imagine hopefully we're going to see some search developments in the next year that's right we will did to really interesting things this year with search one is that they created this thing called the knowledge graph which is their effort to map out connections between all sorts of different things so if you search for an actress that you'll start to see a little box on the side of the search window that tells you about other actors that person may have worked with or here's some of the films that they were in Google wants to bring this to a lot more different parts of the search experience so you're going to start to see more and more of those connections surface when you start typing in your queries so I think that's going to be really big next year the other thing is they introduced this thing Google now which is a kind of predictive search so that when you take out your phone it'll say you need to leave to get to your next appointment because there's traffic right now you might want to take this road because it's closed that's only available on devices that run the latest version of Android right now next year you're going to start to see a lot more people starting to use that Google's going to invest a lot of resources in developing this kind of new world of search where you don't even have to type in a query so 2013 sounds busy enough as it is but is there one final thing that you've got your eye on for next year there's an open question of an antitrust case is the US Federal Trade Commission going to come in and say Google you have violated competition laws there are some within and in Washington who believe that Google is favoring its own search results over those of its competitors so will the FTC come in and say Google you need to change the way you're presenting search results that could have a few different effects on the company one might be that Google agrees to make some minor changes one might be that they fight it and it would be a huge lawsuit some have compared it to having the potential impact that the antitrust case against Microsoft had a couple decades ago and what would the impact be to the consumer or the user right so it could change that well what your search results look like maybe when you started searching for things that you wouldn't see Google products like you know Google Maps or its own restaurant ratings float to the top maybe it starts seeing Yelp or other products rise a little bit higher in search yeah interesting well Casey thank you so much it certainly is going to be a busy year ahead best of luck to you and thank you everyone for watching the future of I'm cars Tsuboi cnet.com