Google I/O ’17 Recap: Tech News + Highlights

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st-tech.blog

5 min readMay 27, 2017

Google I/O, an annual developer conference took place Wednesday 5/17 until Friday 5/19 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in CA. The giant gathering brought out thousands of techies for breakout sessions, live codelabs, and learning tracks. Many topics were at the center of attention, most notably: Android O, Google Assistant, Mobile/Web Dev, and Machine Learning/AI. We are diving into the event to bring you up to speed on some of the cool things Google has going on for developers this year.

From Mobile-First to AI-First

Google’s mission to democratize access to AI technology was clear at Google I/O ’17. Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, opened up the conference discussing all of the ways in which artificial intelligence is helping the company make serious moves in terms of building infrastructure.

One of the most exciting things we all can do is demystify machine learning and AI. It’s important for this to be accessible by all people. That journey matters.

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

Pichai also announced the launch of Google.ai — the tech company’s open research platform that serves as a way to educate and involve technologists as Google seeks to bring the benefits of artificial intelligence to everyone, everywhere.

New Google Product Announcements + Updates

Android O @ Google I/O

All New Notifications: Taking a page from the iOS playbook, Android O will bring badges to app notifications. They do come with a twist, though. The new notifications will have the ability to be read and/or dismissed without visiting the app itself or swiping it Clear from your notifications display.
New Redesigned Emojis: Goodbye, blobs! We will miss you dearly. Android O is bringing flatter, more refined emojis to Android keyboards this year. Let us know how you feel about the change on Twitter. We’re admittedly quite averse — the blobs will definitely be missed for their uniqueness.

Smart Text Selection: More machine learning features! Android O eliminates the need for long-pressing text in order to copy/paste it. Smart Text Selection uses on-device machine learning to just grab the data you need with a double-tap. Most importantly, it can suggest actions now based on what it computed from the text.
Picture-in-Picture (PiP) Video: If you’re a YouTube Red subscriber, things just got even better for you. Android O will bring PiP video to your device so you can watch YouTube and browse Facebook. Hell, if you have a Pixel go ahead and split screen Gmail while you’re at it. Android O brings multitasking to life with the new picture-in-picture video feature.

Introducing WorldSense @ Google I/O

Last year, the Daydream VR platform launched for the Google Pixel and Pixel XL. The Daydream View headset has since been enabled on other Android devices so more users can enjoy the VR apps and experiences made for smartphone VR.

3D tracking and sensing is a fundamental part of the user experience. This type of immersive tech allows us to experience computing like we experience the real world.

Johnny Lee, Director of Engineering, Google Tango

Google I/O ’17 revealed the work Daydream VR and Google Tango have been doing with WorldSense positional tracking. WorldSense computes visual motion information by using motion sensors built-in the smartphone to physically track the user. 3D modelling and applied machine learning techniques fill in the blanks associated with “drifting” out of position within a virtual world. HTC and Lenovo will be the first to ship consumer units of these standalone VR headsets — powered by WorldSense — this year.

Introducing Google Lens @ Google I/O

According to the Google Assistant Team, the future of the Assistant is to have a conversation about what you’re seeing as you’re seeing it. The first step? Google Lens.

Here are a few things you can do with Lens:

Point your phone’s camera at a flower and get information about it instantly like its species, its growth seasonality, the type of environment it lives best in, etc;
Automatically log you into a WiFi network just by taking a picture of the router’s information;
Get reviews and other info about a restaurant or store near you — just aim your camera at it.
Scan anything with an electronic identifier (THINK: product barcode, QR code, RFID tag, etc.) for instant information about it.

Google Lens is a full-fledged visual search engine powered by Google search, computer vision, and machine intelligence. The feature will be available on Android O via the Google Assistant this fall.

Mobile Dev @ Google I/O

Google Assistant Open to Dev’s

This year’s showstopper at I/O was the announcement that the Google Assistant is officially open to developers. Now it’s possible to program Actions on Google for Assistant apps. These apps extend the Google Assistant by letting developers build actions that let users get things done with their products and/or services.

Google Assistant was a major spotlight at the developer’s conference — adding support for transactions and more than 70 smart home devices.

Google is growing the Assistant beyond Android, announcing at the developer’s conference that the Google Assistant will roll-out on iOS this year. In addition, Google teased what’s to come for the Google Home with visual responses on Android TV and other devices. The Assistant is a huge part of the company’s push towards being AI-first and it showed at Google I/O ’17.

Android + Kotlin

Kotlin is a smarter, more advanced language. Now that Google is going to support it officially, it’s going to push the community to do much more with it. I’m very excited to see how this goes.

– Lucia, App Developer, N26

In addition to Java and C++, Google announced that Android developers can now program in Kotlin. This marks the first time developers are able to natively program Android apps using the programming language Kotlin.

This is a major stride for the tech giant as Kotlin tends to be the favorite among developers — particularly those who aren’t fond of the headaches associated with the Java programming language and find Kotlin to be much more modern.

The key takeaway from the Google I/O developer’s conference is that the company has a lot in store for developers this year. Their goal is to bring advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence to everyday products and services. These little breakthroughs aim to make the lives of developers easier while expanding Google’s own technological infrastructure in the process.

Visit us at https://st-tech.blog or give us a shout out on Twitter to let us know which of the announcements you are most excited about from Google I/O.