Going big at Google I/O 2012

Google I/O, the search giant's annual developer conference, offered a heady mix of new products among the more technical tracks, focusing on the numerous updates to Google services and APIs. Six thousand attendees packed into the Moscone Centre, in San Francisco, to watch the company's strategy expand into new areas.

With the mobile world settling into a Google-versus-Apple marketplace, the open questions were mostly about how Android's updates would stack up against key Apple technologies, with one eye on Microsoft's Windows 8 challenger. As expected, several of the announcements were aimed squarely at closing the competitive gap with Apple and other competitors, and extending leads in some cases.

Google still makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising, mainly in search, meaning nearly every product on show does not make the company any money, at least not directly. Such is Google's market strategy, and it is one which is working well. Investors don't seem alarmed by the potential disconnect - the company's share price ticked upwards healthily over the course of the conference, as the announcements just kept coming.

By far the most exciting launch at Google I/O was the demonstration of Project Glass, the augmented reality project. Attendees were treated to live video streams from skydivers landing on the Moscone Centre's roof, and stunt cyclists and rappellers making their way into the auditorium.

Project Glass brings wearable computing to Google users, with a headset with integrated electronics, including a video camera, and a see-through display mounted just above one eye. The software then integrates positioning, audio and video data with Google services, to share activity with contacts and to show the user contextual information such as location-based services, social media, and almost certainly, advertising. Integrating Google Maps and Streetview data is a given, of course.

Project Glass is expected to be a consumer reality in 2014, with development prototypes available next year at the eye-watering price of $1 500. By the time products start to ship, they're expected to cost much less - priced comparatively with smartphones - but still an expensive proposition.

Glass and the Nexus Q are both incarnations of Google's next major evolution - becoming directly embedded in users' daily lives, on the move and at home.

Jelly Bean continues Google's alphabetic march through the desserts of the world. Like Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), this version is an extensive update to both user interface and core services. Although many smartphone users are still waiting for 4.0 to be approved by carriers, 4.1 will ship in July, the company said.

Among the numerous small upgrades are a handful of significant key changes. One is the introduction of triple-buffered video, aimed at making the interface smoother and more responsive. Android devices are often criticised for not offering the same sleek response as Apple's iPads - iOS gives screen IO top priority to ensure that even if apps are struggling to keep up, the interface still feels slick and responsive. Android handles IO differently, and has struggled with complaints of input lag since the early days - throwing hardware at the problem only helps until the increased RAM/CPU/GPU resources are exhausted.

Project Butter, as it was known internally, aims to improve the user experience. The input layer now attempts to predict when and where screen presses will occur, to make resources available at the right moment.

Google Beam has been updated too - the service which allows near field communication (NFC)-equipped devices to share contact information by simply bumping them together - and can now share videos, images, and synchronisation apps.

Voice typing has been updated, and can now work offline. Greatly improved voice control and contextual search take aim at Apple's Siri; but it's another big announcement from I/O 2012 which really puts Siri in Android's sights - Google Now.

Google Now is a new service that sits above location, search history and calendar services to pull together a smart interface with relevant context for the user. For example, book a flight, and you might get notifications that the plane is delayed without having to specifically check for that. Information about shops and restaurants can be tuned to your specific location. Driving directions can be adjusted to avoid congestion to ensure a calendar event runs on time.

Privacy concerns will surely follow, and although the personalisation services can be disabled, that will render Google Now much less useful.

Most importantly for Google and Android OEMs, Google Now, coupled with improved voice control in Android, brings Google's engineering weight to bear on Apple's Siri, offering deeper integration, but it will have to deliver real-world results beyond keynote demonstrations to keep impressing users.

A new Google Events service bridges Google+ and Google Calendar. A Google Event provides not only a new interface for creating and managing events, but also integrates with updates, so that everyone at a party, for example, can post pictures and updates directly to the event's stream.

One of the most interesting announcements at I/O was the Nexus 7 tablet, aimed squarely at Amazon's Kindle Fire. Nexus is Google's family of hardware, including the Galaxy Nexus smartphone, manufactured by Samsung, the Nexus 7 tablet, and Nexus Q media player.

The Nexus 7 runs the new Jelly Bean version of Android, and features high-performance specs (especially when compared to the Fire), but with some notable exclusions that have drawn criticism.

Its seven-inch, 1 280 x 800 resolution screen is ready for high-def video, and while lower than Apple's third-generation iPad in pixel density, it's not far off. The tablet is powered by a quad-core nVidia Tegra chipset, with 12 graphics cores.

And, most significantly, it's priced at $200, almost exactly the same as the Kindle Fire, and $50 less than Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2. Count in the $25 Play Store credit you get with the device, and it looks cheaper, and better, than anything in its class.

However, it does lack a rear-facing camera (front-facing is included), and most crucially, no expansion slots to increase its storage.

And, of course, South African users are currently unable to purchase the full catalogue of media in the Play Store, which means this device may be relatively unappealing to local consumers.

Pros and cons aside, the Nexus 7 looks to be primarily about Google sending a clear message to Amazon. The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet made strong inroads in the tablet space, with a low price and access to an Amazon-specific marketplace for media and apps. Google is happy for OEMs to use its operating system free of charge, but any product aimed at ring-fencing part of the community will be met with a robust response.

Predictably, competitors are already queuing up to assert patent infringement against the device - Nokia was first out of the blocks, but others will follow.

The Nexus Q is a media centre device capable of streaming audio and video throughout the home, controlled by an Android app, allowing for seamless integration between smartphones, TVs, and Internet services.

The Q is really two very different pieces of a puzzle. The first is the software. Google has been promising Google TV for a long time, and this may be either a key part of that strategy, or a complete replacement - so far, either is possible. The software, while reportedly buggy in its current form, is a clear shot across the bows of Apple, Microsoft and Sony, which are both trying to dominate the living room with the Apple TV, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, respectively. Google, with the Play Store (which is to be expanded with movies and TV series), is well-positioned to bring integrated media, Internet services and social networks together.

But the second piece is the hardware, and that's where a lot of questions arise. Priced at $299, the Nexus Q costs the same as an Apple TV and Xbox 360 combined. That's a big investment, especially as Google is hoping you'll put one of these in every room and power your whole house's media through its apps and services - the software is built to be aware of other Qs nearby. Then there are the specifications - the Q includes a 35W amplifier to power speakers, but anyone paying $300 for a media device quite possibly has a good receiver already - that may be a redundant component, raising the price unnecessarily.

Lastly, the form factor - the Q is a beautifully machined sphere (lending itself to a lot of Q ball puns), but if there's one thing media centre components have in common, it's that they are flat, so they can be stacked. The Q just doesn't fit into a media centre: it's a better standalone unit.

This is just the first cut, so expect to see other versions, or OEM products running the OS and software, with less limited pricing and specs, in the future.

Google has signed up, among others, Sony, Disney, ABC and NBC, but South African users will have severely limited access to content.

The Google Chrome browser will be available shortly for Apple iPhones and iPads, as well as being the default browser in Android 4.1. This will bring the unified browser - with synchronised bookmarks, history, add-ons and settings - to mobile devices, as well as desktops.

Google Drive - the cloud storage service which has superseded Google Docs - has also been extended to iOS devices.

New devices running ChromeOS - Google's Web-oriented operating system - were announced at I/O too: Samsung's Series 5 Chromebook and Series 3 Chromebox (netbook and set-top box, respectively). The devices feature greatly upgraded CPUs and RAM, as well as an overhauled ChromeOS, now offering better multitasking and designed to be less reliant on a permanent Internet connection, tackling the main criticism of earlier generation ChromeOS devices.

Google Documents is in the process of being upgraded to allow documents to be edited offline, which should finish the picture for this generation - Gmail already offers offline support.

The big question remaining is whether ChromeOS devices can compete with budget devices running Windows 8 RT, which could offer users a more familiar environment and a broad set of existing applications.

It wasn't all consumer goodness at I/O.

Google also unveiled the Google Compute Engine, an infrastructure as a service platform currently offering support for KVM virtual machines running (at launch) CentOS or Ubuntu, offering scalability and reliability based on Google's enormous data centre resources.

Communication between nodes will be encrypted by default. Pricing is competitive, but complicated. Existing cloud computing competitors will have little to worry about until the platform is proved solid, and extends support to other clients.