Google I/O 2015 Live Blog: Follow All The News As It Happened

It’s that time of year again! Google is holding its annual developer conference, I/O, in San Francisco, and we’re here to bring you all the action as it happens from the opening keynote. Get in here and follow along!

All the action from Google I/O kicks off at 2:30am on Friday 29 May. We’ll be watching and bringing you all the action.

All times are in AEST.

5:15pm, 28 May

It’s that time of year again: it’s Google I/O keynote time!

5:25pm

We’ve already covered some of the things we’re likely to see at Google I/O today.

More: Everything We Know So Far About Google I/O 2015

So far, we’re expecting to see Android M, mobile payment news, something to do with the unbundling of Google+ and maybe even some new gadgets for us to play with!

5:30pm

What do you want to see from Google this year? Let us know in the comments!

2am, 29 May

Morning, readers!

2:10am

Thanks for joining us for another Google I/O live blog.

We’re expecting to see some awesome stuff over the next 2.5 hours! Everyone’s just getting seated and the show will kick off in about 20 minutes.

2:11

Remember, you can stream the conference live here.

2:12

The theme this year is blue!

2:18

Google has turned the screen for its presentation into a giant game of PONG while we wit for the show to get started.

Everyone sucks at it.

2:33

It’s a packed house, and we’re about to get underway!

But not before those PONG finals happen.

2:34

It begins!

Right now we’re watching planets zoom around the galaxy in some giant, Silicon Valley planetarium show.

We started from outside the Milky Way, and now we’re making our way in towards Earth.

2:38

And as if one starting movie wasn’t enough, now we’re doing a countdown from 60 seconds.

We’re already 10 minutes late, you lot!

2:40

But wait, there’s more! A third intro video is happening.

This is how they plan to cover 2.5 hours then…

2:41

Google’s SVP of Products, Sundar Pichai is here!

2:42

There are over 2 million people in 90 countries watching the live blog.

We’re checking in with a few different places like Mexico City, Munich and a small town in Kenya.

2:44

Pichai is giving us a crash course in stuff Google’s built.

Google is talking about two things: “evolving its computing” and “evolving the mobile experience”.

2:45

Onto Android!

8 out of 10 phones shipped last year run on Android.

Here’s what the world looks like just in Android phones:

There are also more models in the market for Android Auto and Android Wear.

2:49

Here’s your first announcement: HBO Now is going to be on Google Play!

Shame that doesn’t mean too much for us in Australia. Booooo, HBO.

2:50

Android M time!

Google has “gone back to the basics” with this one, looking at “polish and quality”.

2:51

Dave Burke, VP of Engineering is here to talk about it more.

2:51

First, customisation. App Permissions will be customisable in Android M. “You don’t have to agree to permissions that don’t make sense to you”. Google is simplifying the app permissions at installation time, and it will also ask you for permission to use a feature on the first time you activate it.

Android M will also allow you to revoke permissions in settings.

2:54

Next, M promises to improve the experience browsing the Web.

Instead of making developers build their own browser inside their apps, Google will now allow developers to put Chrome on top of their app in something called Chrome Custom Tabs.

Custom Tabs keeps you signed in, keeps your Autofills and your saved passwords so you don’t have to re-enter them.

2:55

Android M will also allow apps to link to each other better. A specific Twitter link for example will allow the phone to take users straight to the Twitter app rather than choose to do it on another app that doesn’t handle it very well.

2:58

Here’s Android’s payment service. It’s called Android Pay.

Get ready for that to be….not available in Australia.

Sigh.

3:00

Android M will standardise support for fingerprints for security.

You’ll be able to do anything from unlock your M-powered phone, purchase stuff from the Play Store, or authorise a payment on Android Pay using your fingerprint.

3:03

Power and charging is also getting a look-in for Android M. “It’s going to be smarter about managing power with a new feature called ‘Doze’”.

M uses motion detection to see if a device has been still for a long time. If it figures out that the device is “asleep”, it backs off on background app management.

Google tested this by getting two Nexus 9’s back to back and loaded one with Android M and one without. The new device lasts 2x longer in tests!

Google is also planning on supporting USB Type-C fast-charging soon too.

3:06

Google is sharing a Developer Preview of M for Nexus 5, 6, 9 and Player from today!

3:07

David Singleton is here to give us an update on Android Wear.

Here’s a timeline of Wear so far:

3:11

We’re going over stuff currently rolling out in Android Wear.

3:14

There are now over 4000 apps built specifically for Android Wear.

“By the end of the year, there will be many more Android watches.”

Yeah that’s about the only news we’re getting about Wear right now.

3:16

Sundar Pichai is back, talking about the Internet of Things.

Google is trying to make the Internet of Things simpler so that stuff works together, so it has been getting Nest devs together with Android and Chrome devs to make it simple.

It’s Brillo time!

3:19

As we covered a few days ago, the base version of Android will be adapted to run on IoT devices like door locks and so on.

On top of Brillo is Weave: a common language understanding or network between devices so they can all connect with each other.

Finally, Google is building Android to standardise IoT device management so it all looks the same.

Brillo will be out for developers in Q3, while documentation for Weave will be out in Q4.

3:24

Pichai is now talking about improvements in machine learning.

Deep Neural Networks are allowing Google’s computers to figure out what something is by looking at it. That way, it can figure out what a Green Tree Frog is from a stack of frog photos.

3:26

Aparna Chennapragda from the Google Now team is here to talk about how your smartphone should be smarter! This is the stuff Google does best.

Google has been building a new Context engine, which now understands 100 million places, when they get busy, what they do and what they can offer a user.

There are also 1 billion entries in Knowledge Graph to power answers for Google Now queries.

3:30

Oh by the way, Google just tweeted that Inbox is now available to everyone!

Back to the action.

3:31

Aparna Chennapragda says that phones still need to be smarter, despite the improvements in Now to this date.

There’s a new feature coming called Now On Tap. It’s a function that will roll out in Android M.

It’s a voice function that can give you quick answers to quick questions with more context.

Say you’re listening to Skrillex on Spotify, you can say “Hey Google, what’s his real name?”, and it will figure out what you’re listening to and assemble that into a query to deliver a response.

Same with your email, tap and hold the home button and the movie that’s being mentioned in a message appears in a card to tell you more about it.

Now On Tap can also pull context out of any web page you’re looking at too. Tap on a photo of Hugh Laurie in a web page, and Hugh Laurie information comes up in a Now card.

3:38

Anil Sabharwal is here to talk about the new Photos app.

Taking more photos has made it harder to relive our favourite moments. Introducing Google Photos!

It’s a home for all your photos that lets you relive your moments easily and makes it all easily sharable.

Live demo time!

3:42

First of all, Google automatically updates everything as soon as it’s taken.

Pinch out from your main photos view and it organises your photos into months and years.

There’s also a home for all your moments to the right of the app now too.

3:44

Google’s machine learning smarts have been applied to Photos to recognise People, Places and Things. It organises everything privately for your eyes only and automatically groups everything without you having to tag it.

Google Photos Assistant does a lot of work for you and puts together albums and collages of anything you put into your Photos app. Even GoPro footage you move into your phone wirelessly will be automatically edited with the stuff Google thinks you want.

Anyone else terrified yet?

3:49

Whoa! With Google Photos, users get unlimited photo and video back-up for free. Original resolution is maintained up to 16-megapixels and 1080p video. Nice one, Google.

Google Photos comes out for Android, iOS and the web today!

Get it here.

3:51

Now we’re moving onto connecting the next billion people.

Jen Fitzpatrick is here to talk about it.

We’re touching on Android One, which is working to create better Android devices for the developing world.

3:57

We’re 90 minutes in, how are you doing? Plenty of updates still to come!

3:58

Something worth remembering about that Photos app, guys.

3:59

Meanwhile, Jen Fitzpatrick is talking about making Google’s core apps smaller and more streamlined for slower, 2G connections in the developing world.

Google is even optimising webpages to compress the mobile web for faster load time and lower data usage in countries where it’s expensive. That’s rolling out in Indonesia right now.

India users are getting a Network Quality Estimator on their phones which measures the quality of a connection and changes the fidelity of the webpage based on that.

YouTube is also being optimised in the developing world: people are able to take a video offline for 48 hours so they can watch it without a connection.

Google is working to make Maps work offline, too. These offline improvements will come into effect later on this year.

4:06

Now we’re looking at a short film about how people are using technology in the developing world to make stuff better.

4:07

Jason Titus is up next, talking about how developers can build apps faster and better.

Get ready to look at some HOT. CODING. ACTION.

4:09

Android Studio Version 1.3 Preview is being detailed. It comes with full editing and debugging support for C and C++. It’s out right now!

4:10

There are huge cheers for this stuff. Developers love new tools for developers.

4:11

Google will use CocoaPods as the new distribution channel for its iOS distributions.

Cloud Test Lab, which is designed to help developers test their apps on different devices, are also coming soon.

4:13

We’re now talking about how to increase engagement with users. App links in Search are getting deeper, Google’s Cloud Messaging platform is supported across iOS now and marketing your app is getting easier.

Google Play developers are also getting analytics for their app.

Developers will also now get a dedicated home page for their apps to group them all together.

4:20

Ellie Powers is here to talk more about App Discovery on Google Play.

Search results are now being organised by category. If you search for “shopping”, it brings up everything in the retail categories, personalised to your needs.

4:24

A new discovery tool for families is rolling out today! It’s called the Family Star. It’s a signal to parents that stuff is filtered and safe to download for their kids.

It also lets families browse by popular characters.

4:25

Android M preview just went live!

4:26

Sundar Pichai is back to talk about the future of computing. Get ready for some VR announcements.

4:28

Clay Bower is here to talk about virtual reality.

Right now there are over 1 million Cardboard users around the world.

There’s a new Google Cardboard model: it has a button that works on any phone, it takes three steps to assemble rather than 12 and it now fits phones up to 6-inches.

Everyone in the audience is getting one of the new Cardboard models!

4:31

Cardboard’s SDK is also now going to work with iOS so VR can come to Apple!

4:32

Expeditions for Google Cardboard will allow schools to go on virtual excursions around the world in virtual reality.

It’s the Magic School Bus of the 21st Century!

4:36

There’s a new VR capture rig that Google is unveiling called Jump.

You can make an array out of anything: 3D printed plastic, cardboard, metal: anything. The geometry of that rig is important and everyone is going to get access to those plans.

Google has been working with GoPro, which is going to sell a Jump-ready camera array for creating VR content.

Here’s what that looks like:

Behind the cameras are some computer smarts that stitch scenes, analyse depth, remove ghosting and interpolate thousands of different positions for realistic VR.

4:40

Google has been sending its rigs around the world to capture the world in VR. We’re looking at a video of that now.

4:42

YouTube is going to support Jump! VR content on YouTube! This is not a drill!

4:43

Sundar Pichai is back talking about the future: projects like Loon and self-driving cars.

4:46

Google is working with Telstra to bring coverage to rural areas with Loon!

And that’s all she wrote, folks! Thanks for joining us for the 2015 Google I/O keynote live blog!


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