The annual Google I/O developer conference was officially wrapped up on Friday, and the Alphabet-owned Internet giant decided to commemorate that occasion by recapping all major announcements that were made earlier this week in Mountain View, California. In a blog post published on Friday, Emily Wood, Google’s Manager of Global Communications and Public Affairs, succinctly listed all of the new information that was unveiled at the latest iteration of the company’s annual developer conference.
A quick look at Wood’s list confirms what some industry experts were already pointing out during the first day of Google I/O 2017 – this year’s event was largely focused on the Google Assistant, as well as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. The company’s voice-enabled digital companion is now not only available on iOS devices but also supports text input and has made its way to more than 100 million devices around the globe, in addition to receiving support for hands-free calls on the Google Home. The Alphabet-owned tech giant also revealed its intentions to launch the Google Home and roll out the Google Assistant for Android devices to more countries later this year. The Internet-enabled helper now also supports third-party Actions on handsets and can make financial transactions, and Google ennobled it with advanced music recognition algorithms that are able to play songs that sound similar to other tracks. Among many other things, Google also launched a dedicated app directory that allows users to quickly locate Google Assistant apps from particular developers and has updated the service with support for shortcuts.
On the VR side of things, the Silicon Valley giant announced that its Daydream VR ecosystem will be expanding to more devices in the near future, including the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Apart from smartphones, the platform now also supports standalone head-mounted displays, the first two of which will be manufactured by HTC Vive and Lenovo and are scheduled to be released later this year. Google also debuted an advanced VR tracking mechanism called WorldSense that doesn’t require external sensors to operate and has demonstrated Google Lens, a new AR service that’s essentially a major evolution of the Google Goggles app. Refer to the source link below to see a more detailed breakdown of all major Google I/O 2017 announcements.