Google’s shopping spree seems to be never-ending. The Search Giant is acquiring many startups, ensuring its future in the evolving tech market. A big internet issue is authentication. Most of us use passwords, which can be annoying and easy to forget. Can Google get rid of this issue?
The company’s acquisition of SlickLogin seems to big the beginning of this fight against cumbersome passwords. There are many ways we can do this with current technology – including NFC, WiFi, GPS and other protocols. This startup’s technology uses a very interesting authentication tool, though – sound.
What does SlickLogin do?
SlickLogin has figured out a way to use sound as an authenticator. Apps, websites or services that use SlickLogin’s technology can get rid of passwords and simple allow you to authenticate yourself by playing a sound. How does this work?
In a nutshell, SlickLogin creates a sound that is inaudible to the human ear. Imagine you are trying to log into Facebook on a computer, for example. You could click on the “log in” button and play an inaudible sound from your smartphone.
The computer would then recognize this sound and try to recognize it. Facebook could then tell if you are who you say you are. Or at the very least the person trying to log in would have to have your smartphone.
The same process can work the other way around – using your computer as the sound source and your smartphone as the receiver. Pretty neat, right?
Is SlickLogin secure?
If Google purchased it, you can bet it’s for a reason. This sound authentication technology seems really advanced and hard to break, but is it unbreakable? We all know nothing is really unbreakable, but SlickLogin could get pretty close.
The startup advertises military-grade security, so it should be strong enough for the average user and business.
What’s in the future for Google and SlickLogin?
We can never exactly tell what Google is planning to do. Sometimes they acquire companies for the weirdest reasons, but we sure hope they plan to implement SlickLogin’s security technology, somehow.
All of this could also be pushed further. Would it be convenient to have speech recognition? Current voice recognition technologies have proved not to be accurate enough to go mainstream, but we know Google likes to think big.
From bringing 10 Gbps internet to self-driving cars, Google is breaking boundaries and challenging the impossible. Let’s hope they can also bring a secure authentication process that is able to kill the password.
