Google I/O 2018: A teaser to this year at Google

Google’s annual developer festival, held at Mountain View, California from 8th to 10th May, brings to light the advances in popular technology solutions offered by Google. The Google I/O is aimed at developers getting “hands on learning with Google experts and a first look at Google’s latest developer products.”

CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off the event with his keynote speech that was full of updates. Here’s what we learned from the festival this year.

Android P

The latest android version gets a new look along with some major changes. For one, Google has changed the 3 button navigation and opted for an interface that works on gestures like the iPhone. The interface is now easily navigable between active apps and has a new dashboard that is made to tell you “how you’re spending time on your device, including time spent in apps, how many times you’ve unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you’ve received.” It even allows you to put time limits on apps to help overcome compulsive app usage. The Android P comes out later this summer but the beta is available for a couple of smartphones from Google, Essential, Sony, Nokia, and more.

The TPU Machine Learning Hardware

The Tensor Processor Unit 3.0 is 8x more powerful than the last one and features up to 100 petaflops in performance. This could allow Google to bring more and more developers into its ecosystem.

Smart Displays

This July, Google will start shipping smart displays with the Google Assistant, in direct competition to Amazon’s Echo Show. They also feature YouTube TV, which was demonstrated on stage with a video of Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Smart Compose

Gmail can now draft a mail almost on its own thanks to this feature, which is an expansion of it’s Smart Reply feature. This is done by Gmail showing suggestions as you type.

Google Duplex

This new feature allows the Google assistant to take calls for you like booking an appointment with your hair salon as demonstrated at the keynote. The call sounded nothing like it was made by a bot and the receiver showed no signs of recognising it as such. This could help Google surpass Amazon’s Alexa.

Google Maps

The google maps gets more social as it allows you to monitor an area for popular new eateries and create ‘shortlists’ with friends to decide where to eat. Further, it’s getting an all new feature the gives you directions in AR. The best part is that the Google Assistant is coming to the Maps app.

Google Photos

With smarter editing powers, such as colourising old photographs, the new Google Photos is capable of various editing features that are powered by AI. It can even subjects from the background so you can make the background black and white without affecting the subject.

Google News

The News app is being overhauled to be AI based. By using AI, the Google News is now able to analyse the content that is published on the web and organise it into storylines based on your interests.

Google Lens

As previously demonstrated by Google, the Lens app can read printed text using the device’s camera. Essentially, a user will be able to scan an image, grab the text and paste it elsewhere in a textfield. It can also identify clothing items and search for related designs, making it a great app for the fashion conscious.

The Google Assistant

The Assistant is all set to get an update that features “continued conversation” that lets you to interact with the assistant without having to say “OK Google” each time you want to use the app. It will also allow for multiple questions to be asked in the same request.

With that, the year looks promising for techies around the globe. Exciting times lie ahead for the developer community and end users alike.