Wednesday, May 18, 2016, Google held its annual conference focusing on software development, Google I/O. The event was held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area in front of a crowd consisting of over 7,000 developers.
Millions of online viewers from around the world also viewed the event at I/O Live Stream. Some of the keynote announcements yesterday at the Google I/O 2016 include new tools for Android, iOS, and mobile Web developers. There was also a pitch on machine learning technology and its potential to deliver better user experiences and an introduction of a previewed platform that enables high quality, mobile virtual reality.
The event will run for three more days, and you can expect more on matters: Develop, building high quality apps; Grow & Earn, to find high quality users, increase user engagement and create successful businesses; and a new look at new platforms for future growth.
Major Developer news at the Google I/O 2016
Android N Developer Preview 3: The next Android release tailor made for performance, productivity, and security. This version is ready for test on primary phones and tablets.
Android VR: Android N stack entirely reworked and customized to provide high quality mobile VR experience.
Android Studio 2.2 Preview: This latest preview is geared towards speed, smarts, and Android platform support. This major update includes a completely rewritten, feature-rich Layout Designer.
Android Wear 2.0: A developer preview of the biggest platform update since the launch of Android Wear some two years ago. It includes updated design guidelines and APIs that make the watch even more useful for watch faces, messaging, and fitness. Apps on the watch can now be standalone, with direct network access to the cloud.
Recording APIs: This will enable Android TV app devs and content providers bring recoding ability to live channels.
Google Play Services 9.0: In addition to Firebases, the next release includes new API updates for Ads, Nearby and Play Games services.
Android Pay APIs: A new set of tools that includes support for mobile web, Instant Apps, Save to Android Pay and an API for issuers.
Progressive Web Apps: This is a new set of capabilities for building app-like mobile sites that work reliably even on the worst network connections. Additionally, they can send notifications to re-engage users.
Credentials API: The latest version of Chrome now supports Credentials Management API, enabling sites to interact with the browser’s credential manager to improve the sign in experience for users. The API enables users to sign in with one tap and lets them automatically sign back in when returning to the site.
Accelerated Mobile Pages: Check out the AMP Project, an open source initiative that is helping publishers create mobile-optimized content once and have it load instantly everywhere.
Google I/O 2016’s Showcase of how Devs can Grow & Earn
Reach a global audience on Google Play: New and powerful tools to help you grow your business: discover and join beta tests from Play Store (including a new Early Access section), discover collections of complementary apps to help users solve complex tasks, see how your app runs on real devices with a new pre-launch report, get insights, and benchmarks for reviews and user acquisition, monitor your app stats and get notifications when your updates are live with the new Play Console app, and more.
Android Instant Apps— With Android Instant Apps, users can open your app simply by tapping on a link, even if they don’t have the app installed. Instant Apps is compatible with Android Jelly Bean and later, reaching over a billion users.
Building for billions— New resources to help you optimize your app and get your business ready to serve over a billion Android users around the world.
Universal App Campaigns— Universal App Campaigns was introduced last year as a simple and powerful way to surface apps to the billions of users across Google Play, Search, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. Google is building on this success by expanding onto iOS and by helping developers use insights to optimize for lifetime value. See our new apps best practices.
What’s Next
Awareness API: Google will be previewing a new, unified sensing platform that enables apps to be aware of all aspects of a user’s context, while managing system health for you. Learn more at the “Introducing Awareness API: an easy way to make your apps context aware” session later today at 3:00 PM PT in Stage 5 Libra.
Daydream — They will have more to share on how developers can start building Daydream apps during the “VR at Google” session today May 19 at 9:00 AM PT in the Amphitheatre and livestreamed.
Chromebooks — You will hear from the team firsthand what’s new with Chromebooks today May 19 at 11:00 AM PT in Stage 8 Crater.
The Mobile Web— They will share what they’re doing to improve the mobile web experience for developers and users today May 19 at 2:00 PM PT in the Amphitheatre.