Tech editors dig into what Google kept quiet about at I/O 2026

I'd like to talk quickly before we start to wrap up about some of the things that we didn't see at I.O. today

because we have the Android show where they talk very briefly about the Android 17 features

and they also unveiled this new concept of the Google book that was half Chrome and half Android

But unless I passed out partway through this show, we've seen no more talk about those products

We've seen no new hardware. We've not seen a new Google book. We've not seen any new demos

about how any of this new stuff is going to work, how it's going to relate to Android 17

or how any of these new AI tools are going to work on these new devices. So my question to

all three of you is, what gives? Yeah, our theory is that they're saving anything with Android 17

for the follow-up developers keynote, but that jumped out to us right away. I mean

We think we heard the term Android 17 a couple of times

And, you know, that used to be the star of the show. So we were expecting at least some Android 17 news

So that was definitely a surprise to us. I assume there's more coming

I mean, Google I.O. isn't over yet. This is just the keynote. Clearly they want to make it all about AI So I would expect more news on Android 17 But yeah we were hoping maybe to get a peek at you know aluminum OS or aluminum OS you know Android OS for PC they apparently working

on that I assume will be powering Google Books. So maybe we'll learn more about that in the next

day or two, but surprising that we didn't get anything like that. Yeah. Andrew, anything that

you really wanted to see that Google didn't touch on today? As a person who covers smart home and wearables a lot, I would have loved a surprise in either

of those avenues, especially because Google has a tendency to acquire these places like Fitbit or

Nest and then appear to kind of swallow them for a while. Now, again, Fitbit Air, they just announced

it, all of this other stuff, but it would have been cool to touch on some of that. I think in

their live blog they were rolling out the details of where os7 um and they didn't even mention it

on stage so so yeah talking about some of that that would have been more consumer facing but

like as you said it it's it's a developer show first and foremost um and it would have been cool

to talk about that and then we could have just had a lovely debate about whether we should be calling it aluminum or aluminium and and that would have been terrific But now it seems There no debate There no debate But one thing I did want to

just touch on quite quickly, particularly if we still have IaaS here, is there were quite a few

mentions of Apple throughout the demo. I also, I think quite a few of our team, eagle-eyed as we are

noticed that one of the demos was being done directly from an iPhone 17 Pro Max

rather than, let's say, a Google Pixel phone or a Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

So it definitely kind of feels that Google is trying to make better friends with Apple

It kind of feels like that old heated rivalry is subsiding just a little bit

What's your take on that, IAS? The giant deal with Google powering Siri, I think, is part of this reconnection between Apple and Google

And I think what Google is really doing with this is with its cross-platform availability of all its tools, it's showing Apple people like, hey, look, if you like this, we have this, but it's over there

So if anything, it's a way to educate the consumer to go. There's more that you can do

And regardless of platform, you're going to get more tools if you pay a monthly subscription

So it doesn matter if you an iOS person if you a Google book person if you an Android person as long as you paying Google money that all they care about So the friendliness is nice and everything but it all part of this great scheme to get us to be monthly subscribers because I will say some

of those features look really cool, but you have to pay at least $20 a month. And they even reduced

the highest tier ultra from 250 a month to $200. And now there's a $100 tier for this AI ultra

version access. That I think is going to enhance development. More and more people are going to

be like let's try this let's try this and one of the things when you guys are talking about android

they did talk about creating your own widget and putting it on your glasses i think if there's a

hole in this in the experience you're getting with all the stuff we saw google show you could fill

it so like if i want a weekend planner they showed you how to do that if i need a panel thing they

show you how to do that but if i needed a special thing to find my coffee places because i only want

some town coffee all right like you can make a widget just for that so i think

they're showing off so many different ways you have access to this service and the amount of

time google talked about tokens how many tokens people are using that's just basically telling

all the industry investors you're coming to us for money i mean coming to us and we're making

money we're making money on everything and we're making search better and they're going to keep working with us and that's going to make us tons and tons of money so don't you go anywhere

Alphabet's making bank