Google has revealed its latest attempt to turn its in-house technologies into standards for the next generation web. This time, its Physical Web project aims to define how we search and interact with the internet of things (IoT), repeating the trick Google pulled off so convincingly in first generation web search.
Physical Web is an experimental project and Google is opening up the code in the hope of creating a developer ecosystem and, in time, a de facto standard. A primary aim is to interact with connected objects without the need to install applications for each purpose. The mobile world is already shifting from downloaded, specific apps to more generalized web services, and the large numbers of gadgets which will potentially be involved in the IoT will make the apps route impractical in many areas.
Accelerating the transition away from apps will be a strong move for Google, whose Android applications base has always been somewhat counter-cultural, against Apple, which helped define mobile apps and is having more trouble converting its models to a browser/cloud approach.
However, ironically enough, the initial implementation of Physical Web is based on a smartphone-based app, which interacts with the ‘things’, though Google expects this capability to be built, in future, into the operating systems of the handsets and tablets which will control the various gadgets around the smart home or office.
Of course, it will have the power to give its idea a major kick-start by embedding it into Android and Chrome OS in future – rich soil for a de facto standard to take root, assuming that Google is right and the smartphone will be the central intelligence managing all the other objects.
The first-stage documentation has been posted on GitHub by Google’s UX designer and Chrome team member, Scott Jenson. He describes the concept as the extension of the power of the URL to all kinds of connected objects. “Our core premise is that you should be able to walk up to any ‘smart’ physical object (e.g. a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car) and interact with it without first downloading an app,” says the document. “The user experience of smart objects should be much like links in a web browser: i.e. just tap and use.”
The idea is that the ‘things’ would broadcast URLs to web-based software which any nearby device can receive. This would avoid the overhead of installing an app for each device which, as Google puts it “just doesn’t scale. We need a system that lets you walk up and use a device with just a tap. The Physical Web isn’t about replacing native apps; it’s about allowing interaction for the times when native apps just aren’t practical.”
The initial software, available for Android and iOS, has clearly drawn on the experience of Google Now, which allows users to ask questions and search for information in new ways, particularly via voice. So the first Physical Web software “tries not to feel like an app” and works in the background, like Now’s underlying software, monitoring beacons as the user passes them, for possible interactions.
The current broadcast mechanism is based on beacons supporting Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE, also called Bluetooth Smart) and may provide a strong alternative to Apple’s iBeacon platform for applications such as getting information about items viewed in a store, instantly and relevantly to the handset. A clear difference from Apple’s system is that Physical Web will not offer proactive notifications because “push notifications in general are too easily abused”.
Rather it will provide a list, possibly curated according to the user’s past preferences. “The phone agent can sort by both signal strength as well as personal preference and history, among many other possible factors,” Jenson wrote in the documentation.