Summary of the Google I/O 2014 keynote address

The two-day Google I/O 2014 kicked off today with a keynote hosted by Sundar Pichai, Google’s Senior Vice President of Chrome and Apps. We’ll update this post during the event, bringing you development as they happen. Here we go:

Google I/O is now a global event spanning 6 continents with over a million people watching. Growing female participation.
Smartphone shipments: 315 million in Q4 2013. Android now has 1 billion 30-day active users (up from 538 million at Google I/O 2013) checking their phones over 100 billion times a day
Android tablet adoption also very strong. Now account for 62% of overall market (up from 46% last year) not including variants such as Amazon’s Fire OS powering Kindle tablets. App installs on tablets are up 236% in 2014 over last year
Androidone
- Android experience designed for emerging markets
- Turn-key solution to build smartphone using a reference platform based on “high quality, low-cost” components
- Example: Device with 4.5-inch display, SD card slot, dual-SIM andFM radio for less than US$100
- First partners: Karbonn, Micromax and Spice in India
Android L preview
- Not just for smartphone and tablets. “One consistent vision for mobile, destkop and beyond” according to Matias Duarte.
- Introducing Material Design
  - “What if pixels didn’t have color, but depth?” asked Duarte
  - Developers will now be able to specify an “elevation value” for user interface components
  - Rich animated touch feedback
  - Roboto font updated to work across range of screens from small ones to large ones like your TV
  - Animations at 60FPS
  - Unified set of style guidelines now available at Google Design
- User experience:
  - New material theme in L including customized animations (even between apps) and 3D views
  - Notifications
    - Design reminiscent of Google Now cards
    - Instant interactive notifications right on the lockscreen
    - Heads-up notifications: Pop up right over what you are doing and can
  - Personal unlocking
    - Based on locations, Bluetooth devices nearby. Example: Unlock not required as it requires a smartwatch nearby and knows that it’s you wearing it.
  - Mobile web
    - Over 300 million 3-day active users of Chrome on mobile now
    - Implementation of Material Design
      - Recents uses the card-based interface and using a carousel to swipe through tabs
      - Improved search within apps
- Performance
  - ART (Android RunTime) compiler
    - ART the default compiler in L Release. Promises to be twice as fast as Dalvik
    - More memory efficient
    - 64-bit architecture
  - Android Extension Pack
    - Tesselation
    - Geometry shaders
    - Computer shaders
    - ASTC texture compression
  - Battery life
    - Project Volta – Optimize device sub-systems to improve battery life
    - Battery Historian tool – Shows you how battery is used
    - Battery Saver
- Android L is the biggest release to date
- Developer preview SDK and early Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 system images to be available to developers tomorrow
- Android security protection
Improved connected experience in both Android and Chrome
- Everything will be contextually aware
- Voice-enabled interface
- Seamless experience across devices with smartphone as the hub
Android Wear
- As announced back in March, Android wear is the platform for wearables
- Designed to cut down on how many times we check our smartphones (125 times per day on average!)
- Uses Material Design
- Wearables remain in sync with smartphone (eg, a swiped notification also disappears from phone)
- Full Android Wear SDK now available
- Developer capabilities:
  - Brings Android notifications to smartwatch with no additional code
  - Customized UI
  - Control sensors
  - Voice actions
  - Send data
- Wearable app installed at the same time as smartphone one. Smartphone will ensure that the wearable app remains up to date
- Devices:
  - LG G Watch will be available today on Google Play Store
  - Samsung Gear Live will also be available later today
  - Moto 360 coming later this summer
Android Auto
- Contextually aware and voice-enabled to simplify navigation, communication and music
- Uses your Android device and casts the interface to the car
  - Compatible with traditional car controls like buttons on the steering wheel
  - Voice controls ensure that driver does not have to take hands off the wheel
- Android Auto SDK will allow developers to make apps for cars
  - SDK coming “soon”
  - 40 new partners have joined Open Automotive Alliance
  - First Android Auto enabled vehicles rolling out before the end of the year
Android TV
- TV is now getting the same level of attention as smartphones and tablets. One SDK for all TV form factors
- Home screen sits on top of currently playing content. Includes recommendation system open to variety of apps
- Search is voice-enabled
- Even Android Wear wearables can act as remotes
- Also supports Google Play games
- Has support for Google Cast
- Google Play Store tailored for TVs to open this fall in time for Android L
- 4K range of Sony, Sharp and TP Vision smart televisions already supported
- SDK called ADT1 available at developer.android.com/TV
ChromeCast update
- Now available in 18 countries
- Usage per device up 40%
- New opt-in feature: Ability for others to cast to your TV without the need for your Wi-Fi using ““variety of technologies.” Authentication can use contextually aware criteria like location or a PIN displayed on the TV. Coming later this year
- Backdrop feature shows various content when you’re not watching TV. Includes your own pictures, art from museums or art galleries and other curated content
- Ability to mirror your Android device to your TV (Cast screen)
- Chromecast updates for these features coming later this year
Chromebooks
- 8 OEMs now offering 15 devices in 28 countries and more coming
- All 10 top-rated laptops on Amazon are Chromebooks
- New features:
  - Smartphone can now unlock and sign you into your Chromebook
  - Smartphone notifications mirrored to your Chromebook. This includes calls and SMS messages
  - Android apps coming to Chromebook. Difficult process according to Pichai but demo showed off Evernote, Pinterest and Flipboard working on a Chromebook.
Enterprise
- Android L allowing both corporate and personal data to coexist on a single device. Data separation and security will ensure that
- Samsung contributed Knox security features
- Other OEMs onboard for “Certified for work” program. These include Motorola and ASUS
- Google Docs
  - Google Slides coming to Android
  - Native Office Editing coming to Google Docs (no more document conversion)
  - New “suggested edits” feature allowing users to make document changes
  - Drive for Work now US$10 per user with unlimited storage
- 58% of Fortune 500 have now “gone Google”
For developers
- Look at Google Cloud platform and how Moore’s Law has affected pricing (eg, up to 53% price drop on Compute Engine)
  - Cloud Save
  - Cloud Debugger
  - Cloud Trace (eg, latency)
  - Cloud Monitoring (eg, intelligent monitoring)
- Data & Analytics
  - Cloud Dataflow: Fully managed service for data analysis on large data sets (up to hexabytes)
Google Play
- Google has acquired Appurify, an app testing service, to offer cross-platform (Android and iOS) testing and global device support.
- Google Fit
  - Single set of APIs to collect and manage health and fitness data from apps and sensors
  - Unified view of the user’s entire fitness information with user in control of what data gets shared
  - Support from Adidas and Nike (via NIkFuel)
  - SDK coming in the “next few weeks”
- Google Play Games
  - Now has over 100 million users
  - New game profile
  - Improved ways to save games
- App monetization
  - Carrier billing coming to tablets
  - US$5 billion paid out to developers since last Google I/O
Google gifts:
- Google has handed out hardware at Google I/O for the last few years and this year was no exception. On tap this year:
  - Cardboard box that promises a “very, very immersive experience” when combined with your smartphone. Follow #cardboard to know more
  - Either the LG G Watch or the Samsung Gear Live
  - Moto 360 “as soon as it is available”

And that’s a wrap for another year! What did you think of the Google I/O 2014 keynote? Let us know below.

3 Comments

Kevin says:

2014/06/26 at 08:30

Perfect!!!!
Max Weber says:

2014/06/25 at 13:31

Thanks for the writeup!
I recall RIM talking about its BB-car at the 2012 BBW World Conference. Ha! Ha! I guess its not worth much if you can’t get your product complete.
Would have loved to hear Google say it will fix all the HTML5 flaws and shortcomings in the current Android platform. I guess that means those are intentional. Plenty of money to spend on fringe ideas but not focus on fixing glaring flaws in their core product. Tired old song when dealing with large tech companies.
1. Jerome Skalnik says:
  
  2014/06/25 at 19:35
  
  Thanks!
  
  I don’t think you’ll ever hear about bug fixes in a keynote – These are all about the new features.