New help from Google

"The biggest applause came from a new Google Docs feature in which the company’s artificial-intelligence algorithms automatically summarize a long document into a single paragraph.

Certainly some of the new ideas do appear helpful. In one demonstration about how Google continues to improve its search technology, the company showed a feature called “multisearch,” in which a user can snap a photo of a shelf full of chocolates and then find the best-reviewed dark chocolate bar without nuts from the picture.

In another example, Google showed how you can find a picture of a specific dish, like Korean stir-fried noodles, and then search for nearby restaurants serving that dish.

Much of those capabilities are powered by the deep technological work Google has done for years using so-called machine learning, image recognition and natural language understanding. It’s a sign of an evolution rather than revolution for Google and other large tech giants.

Many companies can build digital services easier and faster than in the past because of shared technologies such as cloud computing and storage, but building the underlying infrastructure — such as artificial intelligence language models — is so costly and time-consuming that only the richest companies can invest in them.

As is often the case at Google events, the company didn’t spend a little of time explaining how it makes money. Google brought up the topic of advertising — which still accounts for 80 percent of the company’s revenue — after an hour of other announcements, highlighting a new feature called My Ad Center. It will allow users to request fewer ads from certain brands or to highlight topics they would like to see more ads about."