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Android has conquered the world. Google+ is the fastest-growing social network of all-time and will soon have more active users than Twitter. Chrome has left Firefox in the dust and is closing in on Internet Explorer.
But Skynet cannot rest. Google still has much room for growth, and several "failures" that must be iterated on. New products to launch, new APIs to demonstrate, and more developers that must be taught. Google is a user-driven company, but its focus on platforms cannot be understated. Google I/O debuted in May 2008 as a conference to spotlight everything new and upcoming in the Google world.
And it is Google's world. We just live in it.
The keynote and all the presentations (see below) will be streamed live and be available for later viewing on the Google I/O 2012 website and the Android Developers YouTube account. The amount of technical expertise on display is truly unprecedented, and if you're like me you'll likely keep learning more and more until next year's I/O if you keep coming back to the videos.
But Skynet cannot rest. Google still has much room for growth, and several "failures" that must be iterated on. New products to launch, new APIs to demonstrate, and more developers that must be taught. Google is a user-driven company, but its focus on platforms cannot be understated. Google I/O debuted in May 2008 as a conference to spotlight everything new and upcoming in the Google world.
And it is Google's world. We just live in it.
The keynote and all the presentations (see below) will be streamed live and be available for later viewing on the Google I/O 2012 website and the Android Developers YouTube account. The amount of technical expertise on display is truly unprecedented, and if you're like me you'll likely keep learning more and more until next year's I/O if you keep coming back to the videos.
Like Google I/O 2011 which split the keynote into two parts (largely, a Chrome part and an Android part), this year there will also be two keynotes spearheaded by Vic Gundotra and several other Google executives, partners, and employees. The first keynote will run from 9:30am to 11:45am Pacific time (12:30pm to 2:45pm Eastern) on the first day of I/O, June 27. The second keynote will go from 10am to 11:30am Pacific time (1pm to 2:30pm Eastern) on June 28.
Watch:
Watch:
Keynote Day 1 Announcements:
Keynote Day 2 Announcements:
- 400 million total Android devices out there, 1 million being activated daily
- Android Jelly Bean is 4.1
- Project Butter: Android is mostly locked at 60fps, triple buffering, smoother animations
- Automatic widget resizing and homescreen reflowing
- Notifications got suped up, two finger gesture to "expand" them and access more info/controls
- Offline voice typing, offline Google Maps
- Google Now is like Google's Siri, location and time-based search, access info in "cards," voice is a lot nicer/more human than Siri's
- Chrome for Android is now stable and the default browser
- Jelly Bean hitting Xoom, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, and AOSP in mid-July
- Android Platform Development Kit (PDK) will be available to hardware manufacturers and partners 2-3 months ahead of new Android versions, allows easy porting of Android to hardware
- Google Play now has TV shows and magazines
- Nexus 7 tablet by Asus, $199, 7" inch 1280x800 screen, 8 GB storage, Tegra 3
- Nexus Q, $299, Sonos-like social media ball thing
- 250 million total Google+ users, 150 million active, 75 million use it everyday, users spend 12 minutes in stream
- Livestreamed jumping out of a plane and other stuff using Google Glass
- $1500 preorder for pre-alpha "Google Glass Explorer Edition" hardware, shipping early 2013, only for US I/O attendees
- Attendees get a Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 7, and Nexus Q for free
Keynote Day 2 Announcements:
- Chrome has 310 million users, up from 170 million last year
- Chrome comes to the iPhone and iPad, releasing today, same interface and features as Chrome for Android, does not include Chrome's fast V8 JavaScript engine
- Google Drive is now available for iOS and Chrome OS, latter can only read files at this time
- Google Docs offline mode is finally available
- Chromebooks to be sold at Best Buy nationwide
- Google Compute Engine, infrastructure-as-a-Service, hosts Linux VMs on Google's infrastructure
- Bulletstorm demo'd as a Native Client game using the HTML5 GamePad and Fullscreen APIs.
- Attendees get a Chromebox for free, too
- Android Jelly Bean
Android Jelly Bean, rumored to be a more incremental 4.1 upgrade as opposed to a full version increase, is pretty much guaranteed to be detailed on stage at the Google I/O keynote. However, despite its assured appearance much is still unknown about Jelly Bean. We do know that the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus (the one sold through Google Play) will receive the upgrade first, likely a repeat of Google I/O 2010 where Android 2.2 Froyo was released for the Nexus One around a week after it was first detailed. We also know it will include several minor UI updates and a new, Google Play-inspired live wallpaper.
- Google Assistant
If you want the cliff notes, Google Assistant is rumored to be Google's official Siri competitor for Android (as opposed to S Voice, which is proprietary to Samsung.) This article goes over why Assistant could be a true game changer, but it basically comes down to full integration with the "Knowledge Graph" that landed in Google Search last month -- those little Wikipedia-like info boxes on the right hand of searches for celebrities and notable figures. It should also have a more human-like voice than Siri due to Google's acquisition of Phonetic Arts, and it will include a groundbreaking "do engine." It is likely to be fully integrated into Android Jelly Bean, and possibly an app for previous versions of Android.
- Nexus Tablet and the Nexus Family
Eric Schmidt guaranteed there would be an Android tablet arriving this year that had more Google involvement than previous ones. The Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a skinned version of Android without any kind of Google involvement, is one of the best-selling tablets out there -- mostly due to its price. A "pure-Google" Nexus tablet would be Google's take on the Kindle Fire; a $200-250 piece of kit with a 7-inch screen. While such a tablet would definitely be on the lower end of the market, Google needs to kill off the Kindle Fire quickly so that it doesn't cannibalize all of Android's tablet marketshare. The iPad can wait. The Nexus tablet is rumored to be manufactured by Asus and could be released shortly after the conference, possibly mid-July.
There are also rumors that a "family" of Nexus devices will be announced at I/O -- up to five in total, including the Nexus tablet and the next "flagship" Nexus phone. Not much has been heard on that rumor for a while -- even still, when the Wall Street Journal talks about a tech rumor, you should listen. Will this be the first fruits of Google's acquisition of Motorola?
- Google Games
A Google+ product manager at the Games Developer Conference earlier this year stated, "By next year, we will not be here talking about Google+ Games, Chrome Web Store games, Games for Native Client and Android games. We will be talking about Google games." The language here leaves very little room for interpretation; some kind of merger between Google's three disparate game platforms is in the works and will happen before next year's GDC. There are several ways this could go down; he could mean Google will bet on HTML5 and offer a simple publishing solution for getting a single HTML5 game on each platform. WebView could render the HTML5 content on Android, and users of Google+ and Chrome would interact with it like any other content. Since he also included Native Client, he could mean that Native Client will somehow come to Android and make cross-porting Native Client games from Chrome easier. Whatever the case, games are likely to be a big focus for Google at I/O and the rest of the year.
- Google Game Center
Expanding on the gaming focus, Google is rumored to launch an iOS Game Center clone. This would allow apps to integrate with an "official" leaderboard and achievement API, however it would be much more powerful and relevant than the iOS implementation because of Google+. In fact, due to an entire social network being built-in, the service will likely more closely resemble Xbox Live, especially if multiplayer is officially supported.
- Google+ Third-Party Apps
With several presentations focused on the Google+ platform scheduled, there's a high chance that Google+ may finally open up to third-party "apps" to leverage its social API beyond games. The Google+ redesign earlier this year seems to hint towards this as well. Like with Google+ Games, third-party apps on Google+ will likely not be as invasive or annoying as Facebook apps have been due to them possibly being siloed in their own stream.
- Google Glasses
Finally, perhaps Google's largest and most-groundbreaking project (perhaps even more so than their self-driving cars), Google Glass, is rumored to make an appearance in some form. Since the fruits of Glass are probably years off yet, any appearance will likely be limited at most to some sort of brief on-stage demo. Best not get your hopes up, the future of wearable computing is close, but still a couple years off.
