 This is SiliconANGLE.TV, it's not the Cube, it's the Gorilla Cube. We're here gorilloring our way into Google I.O. because it's obviously a tier one tech event, Google I.O. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com, and my guest here for this segment is Ben Parr, who's a columnist at CNET, he's an entrepreneur working on a stealth startup, formerly editor-in-chief of Mashable, editor-in-large, editor-in-large, he has a zillion there's Pcashmore, but then you're very well known in obviously the tech reporting punditry world, but also you're an entrepreneur and I guess an analyst as well, I mean you know a lot. What you're trying to say have been around the block because if so, that's true. Yeah, you got an opinion, you got really around the block, what's your opinion right now, Google Plus, they're cool with the demo, but a lot of sizzle, is there meat on the bone here? Google Plus specifically, this entire thing in general. Just here, the whole event, Google is showing. The event has been pretty good in general, I mean when you have people demoing your product by jumping out of fricking zeppelins, you're going to catch everybody's attention, everyone's going to be talking about that for days, jump out of the plane. The thing actually worked, had a Google hangout while you're jumping down, it was really quite impressive. They land on the top of Moscone and they bike over jumps and then repel down, I mean come on, hop that. It was well choreographed, and of course they did not disappoint by giving everybody a tablet, a phone, and the new Nexus Cube sphere device, but at the core of it is it like the tablet, it's a pretty good price. It doesn't compete with the iPad though, it competes with the Kindle Fire. The phones, I mean we'll see what happens, the phones are doing well, and then you have that Nexus Cube device, that $300 home entertainment system that competes with the Apple TV, I don't think it's going to go anywhere, the price is too high. I got to ask you about Sergey Brin, I mean I've known Sergey since he started Google. I've also known Steve Jobs when he was alive, going way back to next and his wife, his family, they were investors in my last startup, but Steve has gone, Apple has got a new CEO. Sergey was up there beaming. I mean this demo was the geek alpha geek moment. I mean he was beaming, he's like set the expectations, so you've got a founder up there, Larry's not here, a little throat problem, people are speculating, but I mean come on, you've got to be impressed with Sergey. What's your take on that? I mean he's not a Steve Jobs, but he was commanding some serious geek respect. He loves what he's doing with the glasses, he loves the glasses, you can tell. He just loves the project, he loves what he's doing right now with his job, like probably more than even past years, you don't have to deal with management, he gets to just do the cool stuff and show off the really cool stuff, and the glasses and the car are the two coolest things Google has right now. Everyone wants to try those glasses. Those glasses could be like amazing done right. Yeah, the glasses are great, for the folks out there, they were showing off essentially these glasses that were sitting there, there's a screen, it's got a camera, I mean they're super cool, it's tech, it's virtual reality, it's wearable computers, it's augmented reality. I believe it's the future, what's the closest thing we got today that meets that coolness? Is there any gadget out there that you've seen that? Any consumer gadget? No, it's kind of like any normal, you got a phone. I mean you have phones that do augmented reality, but you've got to have the thing up there. There are glasses that do photo taking, but they don't do it as good as the Google glasses do it. I mean they're basically the closest you have is like advanced army, military stuff, devices that are checking your blood pressure and that. I like devices that are tracking me the Fitbits and that, they can track my health and can track how I am, but the glasses are the next stage. I want to be able to look at you and be like reporter, journalist, rich guy, be able to have a little thing pop up on top of their head and that's what the glasses could do. When it's a little Terminator meets Iron Man feature, you know, a little virtual reality kind of thing going on in the mass there. I heard today, you know, Sergey Brin's apparently is going to be Tony Stark. Just wait until he builds the rest of the suit. You heard it right here first, SiliconANGLE TV, Sergey Brin is Iron Man. Let's talk about some of the other features. So Android obviously, Ice Cream Sandwich last year, this year it's Jelly Bean. Obviously they're running like the wind trying to catch up to Apple. All their features are me too. They're playing catch up. They got to get the gesture thing down. They got to get the software to work. App Store's got traction. What's your angle on their differentiation? So they're obviously copying, which is core strategy. And you get to the baseline and differentiate. What's your angle on that? I mean, they're catching up in terms of feature sets and they have some features that are really cool and even some that don't aren't on iOS. That's, I mean, their distribution strategy is different, right? They get a lot of handset makers and all of that. But the differentiator that they still have not one on is design. And the design is better, but just nowhere near as good as Apple. Like even something as simple as Apple, the iPhone is curved edges. You see it's curved edges around on the top. And in fact, the screen is like items in it or curved edges rather than square boxes. It's these little divine things that really make iOS the number one device around. Android starts to catch up, especially in terms of design. What do you think about Google's now feature? Because obviously that's pretty cool. A little bit of privacy, kind of like your hair raised. Whoa, they know my commute to work. It's designed for the real time experience. They talked about auto travel, travel, walking down the street with restaurants. Essentially user centric real time kind of map integration. What's your take on Google now? Just wait till they put those in the glasses. It's a cool feature. Yeah, there's going to be a few privacy things people will be like, I don't want you to automatically figure out that I am a Chicago Bears fan. Although, I mean, it's the right assumption. If I search a bunch of Chicago Bears, I must be a Chicago Bears fan. But it's kind of a little creepy, just a little creepy. People get over that, though. I think the future is like people will not mind that as long as you're delivering really good value. And Google now delivers a lot of good value. If it works, exactly right. I think it's going to have a couple of issues before like they get it down. Okay, so obviously continuing the quest to commoditize every other feature that Apple has. Google Currents, you got Google Play. They showed essentially Google Reader meets the Flipboard. What's your take on the whole magazine thing? They have all these kind of new features. I'll see what we work for a blog. We're about new media. What's your take on that? I'm still going to go buy my books on the Amazon, the Kindle, because they have the largest and best library around. And the nice thing about the Amazon library is that I can read it on my iPad or my Android device or any other device. Like Google Play, there are cool aspects of it. It just doesn't have as many of the features and it doesn't have anything that's so different that I'm like, wow, I must switch. Those are rare finds. Like it's the same with Google Plus. I think it's a better designed product and it's a pretty product than Facebook. But there's no, wow, I have to switch type of feature. More importantly, the network effect matters. The network effect of the Amazon Kindle and the Amazon ecosystem. I mean, people are going to so read books through that. Same with iTunes. What about the Google Events product? Essentially, Eventbrite needs. Well, that's cool. I mean, that makes an event, brings it to life. Oh, I like that a lot. It's less that and more the fact that it integrates directly into my calendar than I think is killer. Like I live out of my Google Calendar. That is like one of my top productivity tools. If I could do more events that way and it integrates directly in, I might use it more often. The big issue still is, though, when I want to discover a birthday party that I really need to go to, it's going to still be on Facebook. It'll be a long time until I think it's embedded in your life, it's on your calendar. If you're going to it, you know where. So they might be able to make some headway there. That's, they might be able to make some headway there. So there's a population of people out there that love Google and use Google, individuals, small, medium sized businesses. And if you've noticed the war between Apple and Google has been around maps and also recently with the cloud, Apple's been forcing people to get on their cloud. So I've been, got a new Mac and all of a sudden I have to be on iCloud. You see Apple groping there? I mean, you just mentioned that your calendar is everything to you. Is Apple weak there? Is that the strong point that Google's been going on? There are areas where, like iCal is not a bad product and it does integrate with Google, but still the cloud-based like pure calendar system, Google still has that better search. Like Apple's never going to beat them. And my opinion, I don't even think Apple will be able to beat Google in terms of like maps. Google Maps, they just have too many resources, too many people. Apple doesn't have 1,000 cars driving the streets doing individual mapping. Then it's gonna be on a global scale, by the way. Oh, God. I was looking at Mexico on a vacation and they had Street View. I'm like, oh my God, this small little town in Mexico has got Street View. So it's an interesting competition between the two. When it comes to hardware, Apple wins. When it comes to software, except for, I would say, operating systems, Google wins, and especially web software, Google wins hands down. Yeah, Google's rocking on there. All right, so final, obviously the final question is the big story. We saw all the mainstream media outlets just recently over here, CNBC, whom we're talking about it in their 30-minute soundbite on their TV operation, the Tablet 7. And the Nexus Q. Give me your breakdown of those two products, the Tablet being kind of a tweener between an iPad and a phone. What's your take on the Tablet? And then we'll talk about the Q. I think the Tablet would do pretty well. It's, I think it's better than the Kindle Fire. And it's basically a Kindle Fire competitor. It's an iPad competitor. It's a really good price point, too. I think the Q is gonna flop. It's just too high of a price, no matter what. I can buy a Sonos- That's what, $2.99 was it? $2.99. I can buy a Sonos speaker that integrates with my Spotify, my iTunes, and my Pandora, and has a speaker in it for the same price. So, I just don't think it's a winning proposition for Google. I don't know. What about the social playlist sharing thing that they showed? What they call it, the social- It's cool, but they're features and apps like that where other people can start playing. And that's not a differentiating feature, in my opinion. That's not a reason to drop $300 on it when you already have an Apple TV, an Xbox, and a Sonos. I mean, the product looks pretty cool. I mean, the industrial design. The design's amazing. I don't, I love the design. It's beautiful. But that doesn't mean it's a great product, but the design is beautiful. And, you know, I should, I'm gonna hold reserve full judgment until I actually play with the thing, put it in my house, try it out. So- And I have Apple TV and it's still kinda awkward. Living rooms are tough not to crack. Absolutely. They're real tough not to crack. Okay, Ben Parr here at SiliconANGLE's coverage of Google I.O. We would not be here if it wasn't for the sponsor that made it happen. MAPR is great. Go find out who these guys are and big data that are the leader. And they're here at Google I.O. Final question, talk about what's going on with you. You're a tech athlete. Tell us about what's going on with you. Do you do a column at CNET? Tell us about what's your situation. Get a quick plug-in. My time is spent on a stealth project called The Peep Project at thepeeproject.com in about two months, we'll be revealing what we're doing. In the meantime, I do also a twice-weekly column with CNET and I'm working on a charity which will be announcing as well. So I keep myself very busy. It's the way I like it. Yeah, you told me about the charity. We'll do a little post on SiliconANGLE. Ben Parr, pundit, analyst, now entrepreneur, making his way through life here in the tech scene at Google in San Francisco. Great to have you. We'll be right back with more interviews after this.