Google I/O 2019
Google to allow users to pay for Android apps using cash
Today, the Android platform sees more app downloads than iOS, but Apple’s App Store continually dominates in terms of revenue. Now, Google is aiming to narrow the revenue gap by introducing a ne
Google Play is changing how app ratings work
Two years ago, Apple changed the way its app store ratings worked by allowing developers to decide whether or not their ratings would be reset with their latest app update — a feature that Apple
Google rethinks navigation with launch of ‘Portals’ on Chrome Canary
Google announced today it has launched a new page transition experience for the Chrome web browser. Called “Portals,” the technology is something the company has been developing for some t
Facebook talked privacy, Google actually built it
Mark Zuckerberg: “The future is private.” Sundar Pichai: “The present is private.” While both CEOs made protecting user data a central theme of their conference keynotes this m
Google’s big VR news is that there is no VR news
Google seems to be waking up from its VR daydream. The company’s ambitious plans to leverage the smartphones that people already own to power VR experiences went unmentioned at its I/O developer
Google rolls out faster image loading in Chrome Canary
Google today announced a change coming to Chrome that will help image-heavy websites load more quickly — but the addition for now is only available in the experimental version of the web browser
Google’s Flutter framework spreads its wings and goes multi-platform
Google’s Flutter UI toolkit for cross-platform development may only be two years old, but it has quickly become the framework of choice for many developers. Until now, though, ‘cross-platf
Kotlin is now Google’s preferred language for Android app development
Google today announced that the Kotlin programming language is now its preferred language for Android app developers. “Android development will become increasingly Kotlin-first,” Google wr
Google now lets developers build games for its smart displays
At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced that it is opening up its Smart Display platform to developers. Until now, there was no real way for developers to target devices like the newly
Google launches new Assistant developer tools
At its I/O conference, Google today announced a slew of new tools for developers who want to build experiences for the company’s Assistant platform. These range from the ability to build games f
Google launches Jetpack Compose, an open-source, Kotlin-based UI development toolkit
Google today announced the first preview of Jetpack Compose, a new open-source UI toolkit for Kotlin developers who want to use a reactive programming model similar to React Native and Vue.js. Jetpack
What Chrome’s browser changes mean for your privacy and security
At the risk of sounding too optimistic, 2019 might be the year of the private web browser. In the beginning, browsers were a cobbled together mess that put a premium on making the contents within look
Android developers can now force app updates
Half a year ago, at the Android Dev Summit, Google announced a new way for developers to force their users to update their apps when they launch new features or important bug fixes. It’s only no
Google’s newest Cloud TPU Pods feature over 1,000 TPUs
Google today announced that its second- and third-generation Cloud TPU Pods — its scalable cloud-based supercomputers with up to 1,000 of its custom Tensor Processing Units — are now publi
Google’s latest Android Studio release focuses on speed and stability
At last year’s I/O developer conference, Google announced Project Marble, an effort to bring more speed and stability to the company’s Android Studio IDE. That was in marked contrast to previous u
Google strengthens Chrome’s privacy controls
Google today announced a major new initiative around its Chrome browser that will, in the long run, introduce significant changes to how Chrome handles cookies and enhance its users’ privacy acr
Here’s everything Google announced at the I/O 2019 Keynote
In a two-hour keynote at the annual Google I/O Conference this afternoon, the company announced a ton of stuff it’s been working on over the last year, from new phones to a next-gen version of i
Live transcription and captioning in Android are a boon to the hearing-impaired
A set of new features for Android could alleviate some of the difficulties of living with hearing impairment and other conditions. Live transcription, captioning, and relay use speech recognition and
Google expands digital well-being tools to include a new ‘Focus mode,’ adds improved parental controls to Android
Last year at Google I/O, Google introduced a host of new digital well-being tools aimed at helping people better manage their screen time, track app usage and configure their device’s “do