Google denies copying Liquid Glass, but nobody’s buying it

Google has posted a promo for its annual I/O developer conference, which takes place this year on May 12. But a lot of the responses are focusing on exactly the wrong thing: the promo video looks an awful lot like Apple’s Liquid Glass interface aesthetic.

“Biggest. Android. Updates. Ever,” wrote Android ecosystem president Sameer Samat in a post to X/Twitter this week. “You won’t want to miss it.”

Good advice; you never know what ideas you might pick up. And Samat’s team clearly didn’t miss Apple’s WWDC 2025 conference, based on the accompanying video. This shows Android’s green robot mascot pulling a cord and finding that it not only turns off the light in the room, but also makes the robot turn glassy, with a transparent glowing look that’s highly reminiscent of the new designs of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, which Apple unveiled last summer.

Commenters on Samat’s post were not slow to pick up on this similarity. “Is that… Liquid Glassdroid?” asked one. “Please don’t tell me Android is going to have a Liquid Glass look,” pleaded another. A third said the new version of Android was “hopefully not [a] copy of Liquid Glass. I mean, stay original, Android…” And so on, and so on.

Nobody likes to be accused of plagiarism, and the Android boss did his best to shoot down the negative comments. When one user joked “Liquid Glass confirmed,” he personally replied “Not happening! Y’all are wild. ????” (The crying-with-laughter emoji, of course, is the universal symbol of “I’m not being owned. I’m in on the joke. This is fun.”)

Another commenter said: “No, don’t copy Apple with glass everything, [come on] bruh.” And Samat replied: “Don’t worry. Not happening!”

There were plenty more accusations of liquidity and glassiness. “Bro hopefully it’s not Liquid Gl(ass) ????????????,” said one. “Please don’t copy Apple’s Liquid Glass,” said another. A particularly forthright reader wrote: “Please for the love of God don’t introduce Liquid Glass!!!!! It’s shit!” But Samat, perhaps wisely, decided to stop responding.

Whether or not it’s fair to call Google unoriginal (and remember that we’ve only seen a promo video, not the interface itself), this does seem like a peculiar direction to take. Aside from the pushback if users do feel that Google is copying its rival, Liquid Glass isn’t even a big success among Apple users. Some like it; others think it reflects a flawed mindset. There were so many dissatisfied users that Apple had to create a toggle to tone down Liquid Glass’s signature transparency effects.

For coverage of Google’s I/O conference, bookmark our sister website Tech Advisor… which is incidentally a lot less worried about Liquid Glass plagiarism than those commenters. Whatever happens, it should be a tasty event. In fact, maybe the promo was deliberately designed that way to generate engagement. You never know.