Google Japan's conveyor belt keyboard is a sad reminder of the sense of humour the whole company used to have long, long ago

Is this a piss take? Okay, this is definitely a piss take. Google Japan has posted a YouTube video showcasing the new Gboard Conveyor Belt Version. What we are talking about here, people, is "a keyboard whose keys are delivered straight to your finger tips." Literally.

Turns out, Google Japan has form with this kind of thing, what with the rotary keyboard and absurdly-long-stick-of-single-keys keyboard, er, keyboards they've done before. But this conveyor-belt board? This one might just be the best of all.

The keyboard has four columns of vertically stacked keys that rotate on a belt, the idea being that you don't move your hand, you just wait for the right key to arrive. As the video explains, "just as conveyor belts ramped up factory productivity, we wondered if we could streamline typing in the exact same way." Well, quite.

"This key advancement allows you to fluidly convey your ideas," Google's Japan team explains, adding, "with keys streaming under your fingertips, it ushers in a whole new era of touch-and-go typing. You touch. It goes."

Google Japan says it's working on further developments of the concept, including multiple colourways and a high speed mode "ideal for developing hand-eye coordination."

There are also swap-in cardboard key caps that enable daily nail care in the works. But my favourite planned feature? That'll be a new "voice guide" mode, where the keyboard reads out the passing keys aloud. Perfect. As the Japan team concludes, this is "a keyboard to come, built for the era to come."

Actually, there's a tinge of sadness to all this in that it's a reminder of what Google used to be like before it IPO'ed itself into the ruthless, humourless cyborg money-making machine the company has become today. Somehow, wonderfully, it seems Google Japan didn't get that memo.

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Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.