All about Google I/O 2014

The announcement of the new version of the Google mobile platform, the presentation of Android TV and much, much more briefly and succinctly — in our material about one of the key events dedicated to Android in the world. 

A small digression to begin with. It seems that the heads of large corporations today are people who vaguely resemble Steve Jobs. Is it similar? Great, we're making him vice president, let him present our projects at the conference. That's what you think about when Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of Android, Chrome and apps, comes on stage. He even walks like Jobs. Only thirty years younger and Indian. 

But let's get down to the facts.

Numbers

• The Android system's MAU is 1 billion (538 million a year ago);
• 63% of tablets shipped to the channels are running on Android today;
• The number of downloads from Google Play increased by 236 over the year%;
• 42% of tablet YouTube views are Android views.

Announcements

1. Google has launched the Android One initiative. During it, the company plans to create a set of references for mobile device manufacturers. It is assumed that with the help of the proposed solutions, vendors will be able to produce powerful smartphones that will cost $100 or less. The program starts in India this fall.

2. Introduced a new version of the OS — Android L.

3. Announced the transition of all Google products to a single new visual design, which was called Material Design, although, in fact, it is an old familiar flat design, which was loaded with theory (Google compiled a large number of guides on Material Design, which tells how the hierarchy should be built in applications using similar design, such as they should visually work and so on).

4. Android L, which includes the Android Extension Pack, will support tessellation, as well as geometry shaders and computer shaders. Plus, the system itself now supports 64-bit architecture. 

5. Introduced the Android Wear platform for wearable gadgets, in particular, for watches. The platform supports not only rectangular, but also square and even round displays. Android Wear devices work in close conjunction with a smartphone (up to SMS display and call cancellation). The SDK is already open. 

6. In addition, Google has shown as many as three models of watches running on Android Wear: from LG, from Samsung and from Motorola. The first two gadgets will be available to order very soon, the third one will have to wait on sale until autumn. The price of Samsung's Gear Live is $199.

7. Android Auto has been officially introduced. An analog of Android Wear for cars. The bottom line is as follows: the computer of your car, being connected to your smartphone, becomes another interface for working with it. The basis of this work is voice interaction. They asked where such and such a theater was located, the car sent a request to the smartphone, gave an answer, showed on the dashboard how to drive. The SDK for Android Auto is also already available. Judging by the number of brands, almost everyone in the car market will support it. The first cars with Android Auto will go on sale at the end of this year.

8. The launch of the Android TV platform has been announced, which will work on set-top boxes from various companies such as Sony and Sharp. In fact, we are talking about an Apple TV analog. Connect the console to the TV, open your favorite Google Play, download movies, music and, attention, games from it. An important point: as far as we understand, all consoles will come with a gamepad. However, games on the TV can also be played using a smartphone. A special section with TV applications will appear in the fall, at the same time the first TVs on Android TV (which will not need a console).

9. Full integration between Android and Chromebook has been announced. Did you get a text message on your phone? If you have a Google OS on your PC, the message that came to your phone will immediately appear. Well, that's just an example. Plus, Android apps will work on Chrome in the future.

10. Cloud Dataflow has been announced, an analytical system that allows you to create data pipelines for further monitoring and analysis (we will write about this separately later, the bottom line is that, in theory, this will allow you to track all the traffic received / the effect of launching campaigns). 

11. Google Cloud Monitoring is a new service for tracking the behavior of cloud products. 

12. Google bought Appurify, which was developing its own app testing service. Now this service is included in the basic set of Google tools.

As you can see, there are a lot of announcements, apparently Google really wanted to replay Apple's presentation at WWDC. And it seems to me that they succeeded. The only “but". It turned out not to be about smartphones and Android, but about the ecosystem around the OS, which was once only for smartphones and tablets.  

Source: The Verge