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At the first-ever virtual Google I/O, Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai talked about news on Workspace, quantum computing and privacy needs.

Google announced new video collaboration features as part of Smart Canvas, a new set of capabilities that is part of Workspace.

The keynote for Google I/O was live streamed from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California on Tuesday, and Google executives touched on everything from new collaboration features in Workspace, to quantum computing, to improved privacy controls. The speakers were on round stages in the outdoor spaces at Google's headquarters, and the audience sat in socially distanced chairs grouped around the stage in the surrounding green space. The video introduction at the event showed a montage of crowds of people at past events, including a cameo of a young Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, which is Google's parent company.

Pichai kicked off the keynote with an announcement about the new collaboration tool for Workspace: Smart Canvas.

Javier Soltero, general manager and vice president of Google Workspace, announced the Workspace news at the event. Soltero said the changes will transform a Google doc from a digital piece of paper to a collaboration platform that is always up to date and has built-in tools for keeping distributed teams connected.

SEE:Android 12: A cheat sheet(TechRepublic)

Pichai also discussed Google's work with quantum computing, describing the technology as the best chance to understand the natural world. He said that the company's current focus is to build an error-corrected qubit.

Actor Michael Pena toured Google's quantum campus with Google's lead quantum engineer Eric Lucero. Lucero showed off the "qubit fridge" and other parts of the lab which included a painting that he described as an homage to mother nature because quantum is the language of nature. Pena's job was to explain quantum computing to the average viewer, describing qubits as smart but picky about work environments and Google's research as wrapping qubits in a Bob Ross blanket of love and keeping them there until they can teach us to think like the Earth.

Lucero said now that the company has moved beyond classical computing and described the next milestone as building an error-corrected logical qubit and then building an error-corrected quantum computer.

In addition to highlighting the company's lofty research goals, executives also talked about work that affects the daily lives of users as well: changes to privacy controls. Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president for Google Maps, said the company is working toward a password-free future by improving phone-based authentication.

"We want to free everyone from password pain," she said.

Fitzpatrick said Google has made these improvements to the company's password manager:

Fitzgerald also announced other privacy changes:

Sameer Samat, vice president of product management for Google, said the Android 12 updates represent the biggest design change in Android for years. He said the three big themes for the update are:

He showed off one example of the phone customizing itself to the user when he selected a personal photo for the home screen. The system created a custom palette for the home screen based on the photo.

"We use a clustering algorithm to determine which colors are dominant and which are compliments," he said.

The update also includes new uses of light that differ depending on the action a user takes such as unlocking the phone via the touch screen or a button.

The update includes privacy changes as well. Suzanne Frey, the company's vice president of engineering and product, said that a new privacy dashboard makes it easier to understand which apps are using what data. The OS update also makes it easier to revoke an app's permission directly from the dashboard. Two new toggles allow users to turn off microphone and camera access from the dashboard as well.

Frey said that Google is the first phone maker to enable technically enforced privacy with its open source Private Compute Core.

Pichai closed the keynote with two new pieces of technology. The first was Project Starline, which uses custom built hardware and high resolution cameras to capture a person's shape from multiple angles. Pichai said that the real-time 3D model generates many gigabytes of data per second and required the company to build novel compression and streaming algorithms to reduce the data by a factor of 100 so the video could be sent through existing networks.

He also announced that the company is working on a carbon intelligence load shifting capability that will let data center operators to shift power sources across time and place. This allows operators to take advantage of currently available sources of green energy.

He said that the company is installing Dragon solar panels and a geothermal pile system at the Mountain View headquarters to create an on-demand supply of solar energy.

Google I/O began on Tuesday, and it is a three-day event that will run through May 20. It includes a series of workshops, meetups and keynotes.It's free to attend for anyone who wants to register. All that's needed is a gmail account.

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Google I/O 2021: Everything Google is announcing at this year's virtual keynote right now - TechRepublic