Google announced Google Assistant, Google Home, Allo messenger, Duo video calling

Google is hosting Google I/O  today. The program started with Sunder Pichai's speech, the CEO of Google. It’s Google I/O Keynote day! It’s the day Google finally shows off just about everything they’ve been working on in secret for the past few months.

Google announced and introduced a lot of new things. Here they are:

Google Assistant: Google today unveiled a virtual assistant tool at its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View called Google Assistant.  This appears to be similar to what Google Now can do already, but it appears to be an upgraded version of it. You can ask a question for an answer, and follow up with multiple questions, with Google picking the conversation out and returning the right answer. The service is integrated in its new conversational user interface products: Google Assistant is also built into Allo, its new independent chat bot app, as well as Google Home, its Amazon Echo competitor. 

Google Home: At its annual I/O developer conference, Google today unveiled a new hardware device and competitor to Amazon Echo, a portable speaker powered by voice assistance technology called Google Home. The device was widely rumored to have been in development under the codename “Chirp,” and the final product name was recently confirmed by The New York Times.

Watch the whole event Live! below.

Allo Messanger App: Google announced Allo, a smart messaging app supercharged with machine learning and Google’s new Google Assistant service (its answer to Amazon’s Alexa), giving users the ability not just to chat to each other with animated graphics and enlarging/shrinking text, but to call in Google (and later other third-party apps) to share media, plan events, buy things, and even think of what to say to each other. The iOS and Android app is being unveiled today, but it will only be live this summer, Google says.  

Duo Video calling App: Duo was unveiled on the heels of Allo, Google’s new smart messaging app. Why the decision to launch two separate apps? A couple of reasons, it seems. The first is to keep the experiences simple and lightweight; and the second: to do something a little different from the rest of the pack. Facebook, for example, has supercharged Messenger with smart bots, as well as voice and video calling and more on top of its basic text messaging service.

Android Instant Apps: Instant Apps, a new Android feature Google announced at its I/O developer conference today but plans to roll out very slowly, wants to bridge this gap between mobile apps and web apps by allowing you to use native apps almost instantly — even when you haven’t previously installed them — simply by tapping on a URL.  Typically, downloading and installing an app would take a while, but with Instant Apps, developers will have to partition their apps into small, runnable parts that can start within a few seconds. Use apps directly without installing and downloading that app. For online shopping, you don't need to create account. Just Select Android Pay. Google already has your contact information. And if necessary, you can easily pay through Android Pay.

Android Pay: For users, maybe the most interesting update today is that Android Pay will now work at some ATMs. For now, the company is only working with Bank of America on this project, but others will likely follow in the future. Thanks to this, you will soon be able to roll up to a Bank of America ATM, tap your phone and make a withdrawal (which is good news in case you forgot your wallet at home but not your phone, I guess).

Android N: Performance, Security, Productivity. As expected, Google made Android N, the next version of its mobile operating system, a cornerstone of its I/O keynote today.  With Android N, Google moved to a very different release cycle compared to previous releases. While I/O is usually the place for Google to share a first look at new versions of Android, it actually released a first preview of N a few months ago. This was also the first preview of N to arrive as an over-the-air update, so far more people than ever before have tested it already.  android nToday, the company is launching the third Android N preview release and the first one the team considers to be a “beta-quality candidate.” Like before, the new preview is available on the Nexus 6, 9, 5X, 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel C and Android One (General Mobile 4G). If you want to test it, you can sign up here.

Daydream: As anticipated, this year’s event marks the software giant’s next big step into that world with another push into VR hardware. Along with a platform called “Daydream” and a VR mode for the newly unveiled Android N, the company show off the headset we’ve been hearing so much about of late — or at least a basic reference design for third-party developers, debuting a sketch of a headset and a controller for third hardware developers.  There’s not much in the way of info at the moment, but the company announced that there are “several” devices currently in the pipeline, with the first units arriving in the fall. According to Google, the specs detail things like optics and comfort — all of the sorts of bits one would anticipate. The company also expects the new hardware to improve the Google VR experience beyond the entry-level Cardboard, making it possible to experience the system for longer periods. And VR is added in Android N.

Android Wear 2.0: Google’s Android Wear smartwatch platform launched more than two years ago and it’s now supported by more than a dozen brands and runs on more than 100 watch designs. Today, the company took the wraps off version 2.0 of Android Wear, the biggest update of the platform yet.  Google will release the developer preview of Wear 2.0 at I/O, but it’ll take until the fall before this new version will roll out to all users.

Firebase: The new Firebase, which the company announced at its I/O developer conference today, takes the service’s existing features and expands upon them. In its previous incarnation, Firebase was somewhat similar to Facebook’s now-defunct Parse in that it offered a database service, user authentication features and hosting tools. In this new version, Firebase takes many of Google’s existing developer tools, like Google Cloud Messaging, and combines them with new and existing Firebase services.

More coming soon. Stay tuned. to be continued ......