Most Important updates from Google IO 2015

Try as you might, its difficult not to be impressed by Google’s announcements at its mega conference Google IO year after year.

Google has positioned itself as the data cruncher of and for the world, and as the algorithms over which it has worked diligently over the years are finally maturing, the giant is beginning to flex its muscles. Not only does it own the biggest platforms we use everyday — Search, Android, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Gmail — it has the wherewithal to statistically analyse data across all these and provide services that will make machine intelligence a part of everyday life.

While Apple brought in the smart-touch-phone revolution, Google sees the device as more than that. A phone in a miniatured sensor, computing unit, a control station and an information source — we all know that. But couple that knowledge with Google’s technical and financial might, and you get a glimpse into the future (and not an apocalyptic one) where computing goes beyond the phones to TVs, Watches, Cars, Smoke detectors, Microwaves and on and on.

So without further ado, lets start on —

Quick note — Sunder Pichai, now Head of products at Google, has become a rockstar for the Indian techies. The whole room in IO Extended at Bangalore exploded into applause as soon as he came on screen.

Android M

M Developer preview, final release expected in third quarter.

Some announcements here seem to be playing catch up with Apple, particularly in regards to Google Pay and fingerprint scanner.

Major new features —

• App permissions — Seamless downloading of apps without any permission dialog. Instead, apps are supposed to ask for permissions (like microphone, camera etc) only when they need them.
• App Links — One app can directly open another. No disambiguation dialog when domain owner and app owner is the same.
• Google Pay — Rebranded Google Wallet, apps can now use fingerprint authentication for logged-in user to confirm purchase. Physical stores can also allow payment via Android phones via NFC.
• Doze mode — Android will use motion detection to put phone is a low power mode when it is not being used actively. Nexus 9 supposedly had 2x battery life with this.
• USB Type C — New standard will have much faster changing and also bidirectional usage (finally!).

Android Wear

Apart from the normal mumbo jumbo about multiple designs and partner’s, some interesting updates included —

• Always on display — Available for the time-face as well as apps, the display screen devolves into an E-ink like display (like Kindle) when interactions stop for some time on the watch.
• Wrist gestures — You can now detect more extensive gestures around the hand and wrist. This looks like a natural extension to the watch form factor. Examples also shown of detecting squats, golf swings etc.
• Drawn shape recognition — More cool than useful IMO, you can now draw a shape on the watch surface and it will offer related emoji, even if your drawing sucks.

IoT — Google Brillo + Weave

BIG announcement from Google in the IoT/Smart-home space. Combining experiences from Android and Nest, its entering the very muddled world of Internet-of-Things with a full stack development platform for smart devices — Google Brillo — which is basically a stripped down version of Android which can run on a broad set of devices.

Combine this with Weave, which is a communication protocol which allows smart-devices to communicate with each other (each device can declare its capabilities, properties and actions). The smartphone sits at the centre, connects and controls all this.

Google will be working with various partners to flesh out Weave protocol and bring out compatible devices which developers can then think of controlling from within the app. Eg — a recipe app controlling the microwave.

Google Now & Search

This is where G’s tech dominance starts coming out. Announcements here are key to understanding Google’s long term vision and product direction —

• Neural networks — Google’s most extensive NNs are over 30 layers deep(!), working to solve previously impossible problems like image recognition, voice recognition and translation. Voice recognition errors have reduced from 25% to 8% acc to Google.
• Knowledge Graph — KG is a very large graph connection millions of information topics build by Google using its Search data. This now powers lots of features which provide contextual results in different products.
• Google Now can now integrate with 3rd party apps.
• Google Now On Tap — Long pressing the home button starts Now in Android M. It reads what’s displayed on the screen, hears whats playing, senses everything and provides you relevant actions it thinks might be useful (eg — set a reminder, search for specific topic, provide ratings, make a booking, even convert pronouns (him, her) to proper nouns(Amit, Sally)! ). Very advanced, very impressive. Natural Language Processing + Knowledge Graph + Total Bad-ass-ed-ness

Photos

Google has had a long affair with photos. Picasa was a product many of us loved, but it was discontinued. Photos, previously mostly a part of G+, has finally got its app much love, and packs up a mighty punch

• Unlimited storage for files of all sizes (previously the unlimited storage was only for files under some size). Take that Flickr!
• Automatic recognition, categorisation & search — You can now search your photos based on what’s happening in them or who’s in them! Search for “Photos of me and mom”, “football match” etc.
• Super performant (perception based on demo) — You can access all the photos stored in your online account across all time and space, from your phone, even if the file is 16 megapixel.
• Sharing — Easily select photos and make a web-link for the collection. You can share the web-link now with anyone.

Cardboard

What seemed like just another goofy prank at last year’s IO, seems to have blossomed and taken a life of its own. To the unfamiliar, Cardboard is a contraption a Googler came up with that places the phone screen in front of your eyes like goggles and with its accompanying Cardboard app, gives you a stereoscopic virtual reality experience.

Seems in the last year, over a million Cardboards have been sold. And Google has increased the funding a bit. Updates —

• New cardboard viewer and iOS support
• Being adopted in schools — Teachers use it to have “field trips” with kids to places which would otherwise be impossible. Kids loving it.

Video : Camera :: VR : Jump

• Jump Camera — The Jump rig consists of 16 camera modules in a circular array. The size of the rig and the arrangement of the cameras are optimised to work with the Jump assembler.
• Jump Assembler — Advanced computer vision and whole lot of computing power to transform 16 pieces of video into stereoscopic VR video.
• YouTube — Jump is coming to YouTube soon, letting you experience immersive video from your smartphone.
• GoPro to make a Jump ready 360 camera array.

This looks pretty damn awesome!

Developer Tools & Play Store updates

Android Studio 1.3 Preview

• Full NDK (C/C++) edit/debug support.
• Android cloud test lab to test apps on 25+ devices. Provided free by Google.
• GCM available for iOS.

Play Store updates

• Automated app advertising. Just give cost-per-user and Google figures out the rest.
• A/B testing for Play store profiles. App listing analytics to measure your funnel. How many people are installing from those who come.
• Developer Play Store profiles, in addition to previous App Listing profile
• New ratings and categorisations for families (with kids)

In others news

• Android Nanodegree — 6-month course on udacity for learning Android development @ 200$/month.
• Offline mode for Maps (with Search & Navigation), Youtube.
• Sophisticated features in Chrome to improve you browsing experience over bad networks.

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