This year's Google I/O event wowed consumers and developers alike, with many of Google's core services receiving an overhaul to bring products like Google Plus, Talk and even staples like Maps and Search into the limelight. A lot of work has certainly been put in to unifying and polishing existing features of Google, but many viewers of the live stream were also quick to notice the shiny new additions to Google's already impressive catalogue. Our agents were viewing I/O attentively, and have highlighted their favourite parts of Wednesday night's exciting Keynote presentation!
Play Music
Since its release in 2011, Google Play Music has become increasingly popular and is fast becoming a rival to the heavyweight services like Spotify and Grooveshark. One of the key differences between Play Music and its competitors is that Google keeps your music stored in the Cloud and makes it available for personal streaming, whilst also allowing you to purchase new tracks through the Play Store to add to your collection.
With a shiny new coat of paint, this years I/O event introduced ‘Google Play Music All Access’ - a new subscription service from Google that offers 'radio without rules' - although their T+C document contradicts this slightly. The competition in this market is tough with apps like Pandora, Rdio and even Xbox Music all pushing their own similiar offerings. However, Google’s take on music subscription is less focussed around on-demand streaming that so many other products provide and more about discovering new music you might enjoy - it certainly has more in common with Spotify in that regard.
'All Access' aggregates your local music and those tracks available for streaming into one giant online library. Google will also recommend tracks based on your musical tastes and even suggest entire playlists that it thinks you will be interested in! If you don’t like a track in this ‘personal radio station’ then you can simply get rid of it and Google will learn from that decision the next time it suggest songs. Unlike a lot of Google services, All Access isn’t free. It is available in the USA today and will cost $7.99 a month if you sign up before June 30th 2013 after that date it’s $9.99 a month. There was no information on when we’ll see All Access arrive in the UK but judging from the amount of time that was spent waiting for the original Google Music to arrive, it may not be any time soon.
Voice Search
Conversational searching is a key part of Google's mobile platform, letting users voice their questions and see their answers appearing on the screen. Voice Search sees a new update to make it even more conversational, allowing for questions like "Where can I get a coffee?" and other phrases. One outstanding point made at I/O is that the Voice Search function is taking the leap over to the Chrome browser, bringing this amazing piece of kit to desktop computers and laptops everywhere! Whether many people will take up the opportunity to talk at their computer or not is beside the point, this is another step towards the unification which seems to underline the whole of 2013's I/O event.
Google Now
Available only on the latest of handsets , Google Now is a fantastic way to put your day to day tasks on autopilot. Whether it's computing your best route and departure time to get to work, offering you more information on products you might have searched for recently or even providing reminders for birthdays and other important events, Google Now is a hard-working digital assistant that keeps you in mind. It uses a virtual card-based system in which you dictate what your interests are and your phone will try its hardest to keep you updated with changes to those interests, whether they be stocks, sports teams or anything else which might take your fancy. Six new cards were added to Google Now in a fresh update, providing assistance with TV shows, books, music and video games along with a location-based reminder feature and up to date information on public transportation. Like many users I was shocked at how clever the Google Now assistant really is, managing to work out what I needed before I needed it. I can't wait to see what these new cards will bring to the table!
Google Maps
This update was leaked slightly ahead of the Google I/O conference but that shouldn't detract from just how great this feature is. The new elements are looking to put Google in an even stronger position on the navigation side of things with 'dynamic re-routing' which linked to an even better incident reporting system that will update your route to help save you from sitting in those traffic jams should an accident or roadworks be the scurge of your commute. The brand new look is also mighty impressive with much more space in the browser which is handy when you're in satellite mode. Overall, the company took a really strong app and made it stronger here. With strong cross platform support in place for mobile, tablet, PC and Mac it's slowly becomming the only game in town when it comes to mapping and these new updates look set to continue that trend.
Google Play Games
Games developers for the Play Store now have the abililty to implement Cloud saves in their apps - no longer will you need to start a game from the beginning if you install it on a new device! The new Play Games service features score boards between your friends, achievements to unlock and cross-platform multiplayer gaming should you have any friends using an iOS device . Users of the Google+ Games are in for a bumpy ride however, Google plan on closing down the service on the 30th of June and removing all user data along with it to make way for the more unified Google Play Games. This should mean that Google+ will see a much larger list of games appearing on its social networking site, but for now the only games supported will be on mobile platforms. A list of supported games is available below, with more games in the pipeline as we speak!
- World of Goo
- Osmos HD
- Eufloria HD
- Riptide GP
- Beach Buggy Blitz
- Shine Runner
- Modern Combat 4
- Eternity Warriors 2
- PBA Bowling Challenge
- Townsmen
- Save the Puppies
- Farm Invasion USA
- Rocket Island
- Chip Chain
- Super Stickman Golf 2
- Wind-up Knight
Google+
This year Google focused on three sections:
Stream
No longer giving a single longer, flat stream, Google have redesigned this section to give a multi-column layout similar to Pinterest. Google have also added an automatic hashtag feature to posts, it will automatically hashtag keywords like “Google+” for example . The hashtag is there to improve how users find related content, simply click the hashtag and similar tagged content is shown.
Hangout
This update is the beginning of Google bringing all their chat functions into one place, as this affects more than the G+ app so we've focused on this in more detail under its very own section further down the page.
Camera
We loved the updates here, showing us bits like auto-edit that add texture and depth to all your pictures, the Best Picture selection tool and a seriously cool feature that checks if your albums contains photos taken one after the other and links them into a sort of stop motion image. Cool and quirky.
Hangout
Google has been involved with instant messaging for a long time now, from Google Talk to Google Voice, Gmail Chat and the ill-fated Google Wave. In that time, its chat services have often overlapped and even rivaled each other. That’s all in the past now though with the search giant offering one unified experience across all devices. That product's name is 'Hangouts' and it is available from the Google Play Store as an update to the existing Google Talk app, also coming soon to iOS and Chrome devices. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lack of Blackberry or Windows Phone support but with alternatives like WhatsApp and Viber available it’s not something to be severely worried about. The app utilises the new unified notifications as well so if you read a message on one device it will display as read everywhere. The app also builds upon the more familiar Google + Hangouts which allow you to video chat, now with up to 10 people straight from any device. Google have built to their strengths with Hangouts and created a very unified experience that makes chatting to your friends, family or workmates a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be support for tablets with the Hangouts app quite yet but we are hoping this comes along soon.
Samsung S4
Google have launched an interesting 'new' handset at this year's I/O event, a Samsung Galaxy S4 running a clean version of Android! By clean, we mean a version of Android that doesn't have a manufacturer's software running over the top, in the case of the S4, this would be Samsung's TouchWiz which has been stripped off the phone. With a clean version of Android we should expect to see quite a performance boost from the already very powerful smart phone. This version of the Samsung S4 will be available to purchase through the Play Store and is expected to start shipping in the US on June 26th at $629, so I’m hopeful we’ll see it arrive in the UK fairly soon.
Wallet
Some exciting additions to Google Wallet were made, did you know that the average transaction online takes over 22 steps? Google have devised a way to keep all your data securely stored so that your information is synced between your Android devices, and your computer too! All you need to do is confirm payment and delivery address. Google also integrated Wallet into GMail which has opened the doors for Peer to Peer payment capability, adding this feature to GMail has made sending money to people as easy as adding an attachment. Non-GMail users can log in to their Wallet and click “Send Money” which is still nice and simple. This looks like Google are rolling in to PayPal territory and they seem to have improved the user experience of sending money while they were at it.
Education
There was also Google Education, this is a fantastic project. Google has been working hard to improve the learning system for children all over the world. They’ve created an Education section available to schools, this will help them get all the learning material to children through the Play store. I get the feeling this is only the beginning of seeing Google’s systems changing education for the better.