Transcript

Colin - 00:00:00
We ended up with an earbud that's actually much smaller, so it's 27% smaller than our previous generation and much, much lighter. The lightest, noise canceling earbud on the market when it comes to market later this year. And that was all sort of built on this idea that if we understand how everybody's ears look across the population, we can design something that both is very comfortable but also fits with that security that you're looking for.

Rachid - 00:00:31
Today we're talking to Colin Billings, a senior product manager on the all new Pixel Buds Pro 2. Find out how the team removed many compromises to come up with the best earbuds yet.

Rachid - 00:00:45
Colin, the team you were in was responsible for the first generation Pixel Buds Pro, one of the most critically acclaimed products when they came out two years ago. How do you make sure that you and the others don't get complacent when working on the successor?

Colin - 00:00:58
Well, I think that's a great question. You know, we learn a lot with every product that we release, and so very quickly you start to see opportunities where improvements can be made. And you know, I think the other thing that's really inspiring to our team is that buds are approaching sort of a new era in our opinion. You know, historically they've been a lot about sound and things like noise cancellation as core features. And then I think those things will continue to be important. But because people wear buds so often, we're really excited. Think about how Buds can be helpful for you beyond these original or or core sound capabilities. So this year we'll see Pixel Buds Pro be the first buds with Gemini built in. And I think that's the beginning of many chapters to come.

Rachid - 00:01:44
And we'll get into Gemini in a minute. Of course, you're a senior product manager who joined about a year ago now. What I remember from my first years that it can take quite some time to truly get to know Google and all the people around you. How's that been for you?

Colin - 00:01:56
It's been an amazing experience. You know, prior to Google I'd worked primarily in early stage startups. Very interestingly. I've spent quite a few years at Stitcher, which was one of the early podcasting companies. So talking to you is bringing back memories from previous lifetimes. One of the things that that I think is immediately struck me was just the talent and horsepower of everybody around Google matched with sort of a desire to do something meaningful or good. That's really been inspiring to me. You know, learning to navigate in a very large organization has, has taken a little bit of time, but working with people that are, are so helpful, has been very helpful along the way.

Rachid - 00:02:36
So that brings us to the new bud in town. Pixel Buds Pro 2. And there are so many new things and I'd love to talk about them. Maybe let's just start at the beginning. Was there some sort of overarching goal you wanted to achieve with Pixel Buds Pro 2.

Colin - 00:02:49
The theme that I think you'll see underneath a lot of what's coming out in Pixel Buds Pro 2 is the desire to remove the need for compromise. Compromise has been just sort of an artifact of consers and decisions and earbuds. Do I want to use them for working out and I have to buy something that's very specific and has a clip for my ear. Do I wanna have something that has good noise cancellation? And so then I buy something that's really big because it has a big computer in it and has bad battery life. Do I want to wear something that gives me some of these better things, but then is very uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time? And so I think where we started was how do we address these fundamental limitations to, to getting the benefits out of the buds that you want. So that's where we started. And, and it was very clear that the foundational piece here is how comfortable I felt to wear the buds and how you could wear them very easily throughout the day.

Rachid - 00:03:43
We're talking a lot about comfort and also a secure fit, which I think maybe in the past was some sort of a compromise. Like either it's very secure but then maybe doesn't feel nice in the years, or you find something that's comfortable, but maybe it falls out pretty quickly. So if you're saying that we sort of eliminated maybe those compromises, then how did you achieve that? When it comes to comfort and security,

Colin - 00:04:06
Your outline of the compromise is really right. Right. I mean, I used to own two pairs of buds. One for working out that, that really I couldn't wear through all throughout the day because the clips hurt my ears. Mm-Hmm. And then I had another pair of buds for daily drivers. And so focusing on comfort, we really, with Pixel Buds Pro 2 did a a completely ears up redesign. I say ears up intentionally because we started by taking real ear scans of many, many people, you know, ended up with over 45 million data points that we then actually started to apply some modern techniques to design. One of the more unique things that I think we've done is that we actually brought a data scientist in to take all of those scans and, and turn it into essentially a program that allows us to understand how to design the most comfortable and secure earbud. So we ended up with an earbud that's actually much smaller. So it's 27% smaller than our previous generation and much, much lighter. The lightest noise canceling earbud on the market when it comes to market later this year. And that was all sort of built on this idea that we, if we understand how everybody's ears look across the population, we can design something that both is very comfortable but also fits with that security that you're looking for. And so one other aspect of that is this twist to fit stabilizer that we went with. Like we took two generations ago on Pixel Buds in general, there was a longer stabilizer arm that many people really loved. It made it more secure. The other half of the population didn't find that this lent itself to being worn for long periods of time because it created a hotspot and it hurt. And so now with this new design, you have a stabilizer as you turn the bud in your ear gets more or less secure. So when I'm getting on my bike and I'm going across campus here in Mountain View, I'll just turn 'em a little bit so they're a little bit more secure and go on my way. And if I'm sitting I can, I can loosen them up a little bit and get a little bit more air in there.

Rachid - 00:06:01
So you nailed comfort and security. Now let's talk about sound quality. So a weird question I would ask you is how important is sound quality when you're also talking about, well, people might be wearing them longer. So it's important to have the comfort and security you were talking about, you know, getting things done while your hands are full. So there's a whole other set of features you're thinking about. So where does sound quality fit in that picture?

Colin - 00:06:28
Listening to our users sound quality, you know, aside from comfort is the most important quality when, when selecting their earbuds. So we knew that we couldn't sacrifice here. So even by making the bud smaller and making it easier and more comfortable to fit in your ear, we didn't want to sacrifice how it sounded. And, so our ability to break through the limitations here is really attributable to the first time that we as Google have released a tensor chip outside of the phones. And that's with a Tensor A1 chip, which is the first Tensor chip we've built custom built for audio processing. So this chip allows us to deliver incredible sound. We can talk a little bit more about it later, but exceptional noise cancellation. And we do this all with better battery life. Our goal with your sound experience for Pixel Buds Pro 2 was to pass your music as cleanly from the audio file to your ear as we possibly can. And in order to do this, we rebuilt our audio architecture from the ground up all in house, which is very uncommon. And that meant we have an acoustic design that's tailored specifically for Pixel Buds Pro 2, we have a speaker that's tailored for it and as well as this Tensor chip that, that supports it all. Now the architecture of the Tensor A1 is specifically designed for great music or great audio. And that's because it has what's called multi-path processing, which means that your audio, you know, the sound that you might be listening to in this podcast right now doesn't actually share a processing loop with noise cancellation. And so noise cancellation is adapting to your environment at 3 million times per second to give you that quiet and blank canvas. Most buds will do those things simultaneously, which means that the audio quality of what you're listening to has to share time with noise cancellation, which means it's not gonna be as clean in Pixel Buds Pro 2, we have two separate paths, which means your audio comes directly to your ear without any manipulation and is going to be the most authentic and immersive sound you can get.

Rachid - 00:08:31
Alright, so you mentioned Multipath, you mentioned noise cancellation. Checking my environment 3 million times a second. Sounds like quite the flex. Why did it need to be 3 million?

Colin - 00:08:42
Again, noise cancellation now after sound quality is the other reason why people buy earbuds like Pixel Buds Pro. And, it's also just this sort of incredible experience to be able to filter out the noise around you when you want to focus or when you know, when I'm on an airplane going to China, how I just want to have that peace and quiet of of myself. Doing that also requires things like making sure that you don't have what's called the occlusion effect, which is, it feels like pressures building up in your ear. Mm-Hmm . Yeah. All of this just requires constant adaptation and the faster you do it, the better at it. You will be, you know, 3 million times per second. May may seem like a lot, but I'd love to see more.

Rachid - 00:09:23
I'm wondering, you know, with Pixel Buts Pro first generation, I think people love what it sounded like, right? Is that sort of a factor in how you approach the new generation? Like do you want it to have some sort of similar, let's say signature compared to the previous generation? Is it anything you take into account?

Colin - 00:09:40
We want it to be, be similar. I do also think that the broader North Star for us as a team is to make sure that, that we elevate Pixel and Pixel Bud's reputation for audio quality. And I think elevating it isn't just doing the same thing that everybody else is doing, and trying to sort of compete on speeds and feeds. What we are doing is bringing, I think, a more unique perspective to the market about how sound can be. And, to unpack that a little bit more, most of the other buds use a tuning, and sort of tuning is how frequencies show up in your ear. That's based on, on what's called the Harmon Curve. And the Harmon Curve has a lot of lineage and audio and, and probably won't, uh, go too deep into it 'cause it might become boring to most. We've decided to sort of move away from that because in our research we realized that more people across more genres out of the box prefer a more sort of neutral, less stylized tuning. Right? And so this means that, you know, for example, most other buds you might think of, uh, of some of the, the well-known competitors are known for having sort of really heavy or punchy bass. Well actually when you sort of go, and you apply that to things like jazz or even like EDM music, you start to actually see regressions in people's preferences there and people end up tuning out of them. So our goal was to have an out of the box sound that sounded really good to as many people as possible across the most number of genres. And that's really setting the stage for our future vision, which is the next step here is really personalization to each individual is where you get the most user love from outta your earbuds. And so you already do that today with a five band equalizer that allows you to change the way that you wanna listen to your music or podcasts, you know, as a bit of foreshadowing here, expect that to become, you know, significantly more mature in terms of personalization in the coming years.

Rachid - 00:11:36
And then we get to that part where you're busy and you need to get things done, but you have Pixel Buds Pro 2 in your ears. We are in the Gemini era, so it's no surprise that Gemini is a big part of Pixel Buds Pro 2. So first of all, how do you bring the power of Gemini to a set of buds?

Colin - 00:11:51
So we've really been thinking about how Gemini can unlock and bring value in these on the go moments. And so that really means a hands-free experience. You know, we ask ourselves, how much of this can you do without ever taking your phone out? Right? What are the blockers that allow you to do exactly what you want to do without ever taking your phone out and unlocking it and doing what you would otherwise have to do it on a, you know, Gemini experience on a Pixel phone for example. That problem and solving those challenges like gets nowhere without a partnership with the builders of Gemini, right? So we started out very early by creating a strong working relationship between the groups, understanding and communicating our shared vision and then starting to work on those parts. And so today, or you know, at launch of Pixel Buds Pro, you'll have the first earbuds with, with Gemini built in, and it has a number of different features that, that make that hands-free experience possible. So the first one is just accessing your, your standard Gemini. The other thing that's really exciting is that Gemini Live, which is the sort of more conversational model and an interaction product for Gemini, also is available on Buds with a hands-free use case. Right? So you'll be able to start that conversation with Gemini, and then say something like, Hey, let's chat and you'll convert to a conversational mode with Gemini where you can have just a back and forth, right? And so instead of the normal, I ask a query and I get a question back. I can just really have a conversation with someone that feels almost like your friend and doesn't require you to say, Hey Google, over and over and over again to sort of get to the next question. It's really, if you haven't tried it yet, you'll see it a lot soon.

Colin - 00:13:38
But it's pretty interesting, more often sort of my hey G Pass or I need to get an answer to a question. Conversations with Gemini Live tend to veer off in all kinds of other ways. I've been trying to find ways to help my daughter become, you know, a little bit more independent and sort of guide in different ways. And we just sort of had one morning a conversation about that for 30 minutes. Wow. And so I think it's just an example of how quickly and early we are in this sort of new phase of, of interacting with, with things that are coming to us through generative AI and Gemini.

Rachid - 00:14:15
So, tell me about sort of testing these features. I imagine, you know, if you'd worked on, on earbuds maybe five years ago, you probably get a set of earbuds, you listen to the sound quality, maybe you listen to how a teammate's been tuning it, and maybe you listen to next week, see if it got better. Now suddenly you're also worried about, you know, how helpful is the product and does it deliver on this promise of hands-free help. So could you give us some examples maybe during development, things you tried maybe the first time you felt like, wow, this is actually helpful in a way that maybe a few years ago we didn't think was possible. Are there any, any sort of standup moments during testing?

Colin - 00:14:50
Yeah, so we, like many other teams at Google use dogfooding as a primary way of getting early and fast feedback about our products. It's a immensely valuable resource that, that we have access to. And so getting these products and these new features into dog food has been sort of always our focus as fast as possible. This is where you're gonna learn what's working, where are the edge cases, you didn't think about all these things. And I think we're learning and I think reacting pretty quickly to how conversations with Gemini need to evolve in order for them to be truly hands free. Right? So when it's sort of like I ask a question and then I get an answer and I'm done, that's sort of puts a lot of pressure on the user. If there's sort of a follow up question or something that's related to sort of reformulate that, that next prompt, you know, think about just like even in the search context how there's related searches, right?

Colin 00:15:48
Or they, we have lots of different ways of saying like, based on what we think we know, you're going where you're going. Like here's other things that are related to make that easier. Gemini Live is I think, a very clear reaction to that sort of saying that like, the potential here is to really sort of like elongate this interaction, deliver more information, you know, not necessarily information only. Like I think there'll be like use cases around companionship. We're sort of seeing people, you know, how do I talk to my spouse about a difficult conversation? What should I be thinking about in my career? Like these types of things mm-Hmm. are coming up and being seen. So I think we're, we're very quickly realizing that the, that the use cases are not only about productivity and information retrieval, but but a very wide set of very han problems.

Rachid - 00:16:29
So did you receive any sort of, because as you mentioned, and dogfooding is a term that comes back a lot in this podcast, so I'm assuming most listeners will know what we mean. Did you get any sort of feedback that's stands out to you? Like a story from, from one of the dog fooders using Pixel Buds Pro 2 and having that conversation with Gemini or Gemini Live where we're like, wow, it's incredible to be able to work on this.

Colin - 00:16:53
The stories about companionship and how people are having Gemini operate as a sounding board for things that would be sort of almost considered like personal or emotional sort of feelings. It impacts me, right? Because like you, you know, I think that personally one of the things that I've always felt like drawn to is like, how does technology make the human experience better, right? And in many cases we see examples of how technology makes the human condition more challenged, right? It separates us, it makes us sort of less close to one another, less empathetic. You can go on and on and on about this, and while Gemini is not a human, but if a conversation with Gemini leads to me to being able to better articulate a feeling to a friend or to create change in my life, like how to actually go from, you know, one sort of lifestyle to maybe a healthier lifestyle.

Colin - 00:17:51
I think these are are powerful forces that we're working with. And I think we have to acknowledge that there's a set of people and, I think it's more than just a little number that feel more enabled to have those conversations in a place that feels less risky. And, maybe with Gemini it feels less risky to have those conversations. And so when I hear those stories about how people are finding these types of outcomes through this interaction, it's pretty inspiring to me and, and sort of feels like there's a clear connection to people taking positive benefit from the products that we're building.

Rachid - 00:18:26
I'm wondering if you expected to be part of a product that can evoke that when you joined just a year ago?

Colin - 00:18:33
I mean, it was one of the reasons why I joined Buds to be very, very honest about it, was this belief that if we could find this connection with Gemini or whoever was sort of doing the conversational AI at Google, that we would have a pretty promising future. 'Cause it was very clear, I think at the time that sort of like whether it was Chat GPT or the early Bard, that the conversational interface, the idea that I would chat to something, at least an initial way of interacting with these new AI technologies was becoming more pervasive. It seemed natural that it would come over here. The other thing I was really excited about, Alexa, when it came out, I was like, this is gonna be amazing. I can talk to everything. But then the reality was far less than the promise, right? And the reality was primarily related to natural language processing and how much you had to learn how to say things in a specific way to get that response that you wanted. And that existed across all of the sort of gen one of assistants, right? And, you know, even Google Assistant suffered from that for a while, right? So one of the promises here with, with these LLMs is that I can say it how I want and get the computer to understand, get the agent to understand what I want. And so I think we've sort of maybe, you know, areas to work on, but like one big step function has been made there.

Rachid - 00:19:57
Colin, when you walk down the street, maybe not in California, but far away from home, and let's say you pass someone wearing Pixel Buds Pro 2, maybe they're bobbing their heads to their favorite music. What does that feel like seeing people enjoy this stuff that you worked on so hard?

Colin - 00:20:12
It's an immense feeling of gratification and gratefulness, right? I think what will be, you know, millions of people will be using these products and that's something that is unique to only a few companies in the world that have that type of scale. And so for me, that experience is gonna be a new one. And so I'm really looking forward to it, but realizing products and seeing them exist in the real world is the itch that I scratch being a product manager. And so, you know, it, it will be the end of a journey. We're on the beginning of the next one, but it will be immensely grateful for the opportunity to have touched people's lives.

Rachid - 00:20:48
Colin, thank you so much for coming on to Made by Google podcast and hope to have you back next season.

Colin - 00:20:53
Thank you so much Rachid