Both problems are worth effort and energy. It is worthwhile to push the envelope at the top because that technology, if it really works and can be developed in a more consumer friendly way, will eventually become vastly more accessible.

Solving gigantic scale problems requires a completely different kind of innovation than what you can achieve by pushing the pinnacle of what's possible.

It also in its (albeit) small way could push ISPs to get their act together. Perhaps thats a bit naive to say but if this sort technology is available, this will help push the boat forward in terms of underlying infrastructure.

I mean to be fair Google has also tried very, very hard to improve home internet access for people, to the point of setting up their own ISP and running municipal fiber networks. That's a pretty big try, and I really wish it had taken off beyond the places where Google Fiber operates.

(NB: I work at Google, but this comment has nothing to do with my work.)

When it really comes down to laying Fiber isn't a job requiring innovation, it require hard man hours to pull cables.

In the end Google tried to innovate around the hard work by burying cables around 5cm deep or so in stead of a meter, which turned out to be short sighted.

I thought Google was mostly buying up dark fiber (I think that's the case in my city at least). Where did they run their own, and what was the impact of the shallow runs?

edit: nvm, found it :) https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/16/18381466/google-fiber-lou...

I mean Google also has Meet for regular videoconferencing that's available to normal humans for free, so it's not like they're ignoring the mainstream.

The issues with connection stability and latency are very real, but I don't know if it's reasonable to expect Google to fix it; the issues there are probably more political than technical.

edit: Also, I think they did mention using AI for noise cancellation while videoconferencing in the keynote today.

Perhaps one drives the other. Availability of magical tech will drive adoption of best practices in all the areas you have mentioned.

In India, ISPs already advertise low latency and high speeds for "PUBG Gaming". The market evolves to solve the needs of consumers. Advertising for low latency for gaming was unheard of in Indian ISP scene, just a few years ago.

So having this tech, would induce customers to get better hardware, wiring, ISPs etc, and would induce ISPs to provide better service.

Most of that Google can't do anything about, because it's not under their control.

And it's really a question of money. If you want to fix all those mundane problems you describe, literally every one can be addressed by renting a better pipe and buying and setting up better equipment.

This Google product is clearly designed for high-end offices that already have all of those things under control.

Google owns one of the major consumer operating systems (Android) and a lot of videoconferencing goes via Chrome. They could absolutely be doing things like offering better connection quality metrics - look at how everyone currently ends up using a random shady "speed test" site.

That exists now. If you Google search ‘speed test’ (on mobile at least) the first result is now a simple speed test provided by Google.

Doesn't for me... but either way, they could do far more than that.

If I'm having connectivity issues to a person, I have no feedback as to what's wrong. If I'm having a connection issue talking to a person, I want to see my ping to their server, my ping to my router, my ping to my ISP, their ping to their router, their ISP, their server, how much packet loss... anything to help diagnose what's wrong.

Instead, when somebody turns into a slideshow with a robot voice, with no idea what's causing the problem.

Not for me, either on android or desktop chrome.

I don't know why, it's been around for at least 5 years. Maybe you have a Chrome extension blocking it.

Anyways, Google absolutely does provide that, as well as additional analysis/warnings in YouTube.

So Google's doing exactly what you're asking for.

Check https://tonari.no/

This needs to be upvoted. Google no way innovated any of this. They will use their billions of dollars, combine that with free voice slave labor from Google 411 and image labor from captcha to train and lock more people in.

Tonari is an indie company, that probably can't "innovate" as fast as google.

Google is probably going to use this to start generating free video data and innovate something else later. It can be used for so many things: gait recognition AI, realistic models for facial expressions, and release that at then google conv.

To words. Fuck Google with their monopolistic BS

For what it's worth, Google used Meet internally for years before making it publicly available.

Normal video chat at its best is just kind of shitty though, so people don't have a whole lot of motivation to put in a bunch of work to make it still shitty, but slightly less so.

If I could get video chat that felt like real life, that'd be worth running some wires for.

Anybody here want to fork Mumble for a better UI and authentication experience?

Convenience and necessity. If the apex tech is so wonderful that its convenience becomes necessity, then it will become those proverbial stones on the bottom.