As expected, there was nothing revolutionary about the boatload of upgrades introduced at today's Google I/O conference, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a whole lot of very cool stuff announced.
The marathon four-hour session covered everything from new Android integrated development environment (IDE) to the ability to create GIF-like moving images with photos you've uploaded to Google+. There were big announcements on Search, Maps, Music, Hangouts, Google Now and developer tools, and a wide range of Google execs and product managers took to the stage to tell us about them. There was even an amazing speech and a live Q&A by co-founder Larry Page.
It was a lot to take in, so to help you make sense of it all, here are the five most important and interesting takeaways.
Google Play Music All Access
Google finally introduced its rumored streaming service, which combines music from your personal library with the millions of tracks available in Google Play Music. It's "radio without rules," as Google's Chris Yerga put it.
All Access takes Google's interwebz smarts and puts it toward finding music you'll like. You can create personalized radio stations from your favorite songs or artists, a la Pandora, or browse recommendations from Google's expert music team. You also can explore by genre. Songs are available with a single tap. And if All Access pulls up a ditty you dislike, you can banish it with a swipe.
To top it off, the service is only $9.99 a month after a 30 day free trial. Act now, though, and you can score it for a measly $7.99 a month if you jump aboard before June 30.
Google+ Photo Tools
No one really thinks "Google" when they think of photos or photo editing, but that may change with the smorgasbord of hosting, sharing, and editing features added to Google+ today.
One of the coolest of these is Highlight, which sifts through your photos and tosses out the crappy ones, because it can do things like recognize if a photo is blurry or has terrible exposure. It also can identify landmarks, search for smiling people in images and ID photos featuring your friends and family. Invasive? A little. Useful? Definitely. Perfect for sorting through the morass of photos you accumulate after a vacation.
You can also fix photos with Google+. An Auto Enhance feature reduces noise on low-light images, eliminates red eye and corrects exposure. A skin softening feature subtly smooths your wrinkles and blemishes, so everyone in your pictures looks like they've just stepped out of an ad in Vogue.
Lastly, a feature called Awesome is, well, awesome. "Auto-awesome" your photos and Google+ identifies those pics in a series and stitches them together for the best possible shot. In other words, it makes an aggregate photo using all the best elements of the pics in the series. You also can string them together to create an animated GIF. The GIF-obsessed Internet thanks you, Google. Awesome can also create HDR shots, or stitch multiple pictures of a landscape into a panorama.
It's time to step it up, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and Apple.
Google Now
Google Now gives you exactly what you are looking for, as soon as you asked. And now, you don't even have to ask. While Google's Knowledge Graph-based search continues to get smarter and smarter, surfacing the most useful and relevant results for your queries, Google Now now anticipates information you haven't even asked for yet.
If you search for the population of a country, for example, it'll pull up that information, along with a graph and stats on how that population compares with other countries it is most often stacked against. This was demonstrated in today's keynote with a search for India's population. And if you opt into a Google Search trial, Google Now gets even smarter. When you search for something, it also searches your email and calendar, so you can search for things like your next trip, or when your next appointment is. You can even compose emails or schedule reminders straight from that search bar.
On top of that, you can search (and get results spoken back to you) on any platform -- mobile or web.
Maps
Google's redesigned Maps experience for mobile and desktop is all about making maps smarter, more visually compelling, and increasingly personalized.
The new Google Maps lets you do things like search for places and see them, along with recommendations, directly on the map interface (the map is the interface). For example, you can search for an Italian restaurant and see which ones your friends like. Click on a restaurant, and a card pops up in the corner with images. From there, you can get a 360-degree view of its interior. Such 3D views are built in throughout the new Maps. When you go to various locations, you'll see 360-degree photos, indoor or outdoor, uploaded from users.
Maps are also more personalized to you. Google Maps lets you highlight specific spots and create landmarks like, say, your favorite coffee shops. Click one and it opens a new map with related places to explore.
Navigation directions also got a facelift. Click a spot on a map to route from one place to another, and Google Maps gives you driving, public transit, walking and biking directions. For public transit, a Hipmunk-like, easy-to-compare schedule viewer shows you when the next buses and subways are stopping near you, with an overlay of necessary transfers on the map.
But Google Maps isn't just about finding, seeing and getting to places. It's also about perspective. The team showed off a zoomed out view of the entire earth from space, making the stars, sun and universe visible. And the clouds you see surrounding the earth: Those are real-time.
You can get a preview of Google Maps here.
Larry Page's Speech and Q&A Session
Page took the stage to close today's keynote, despite vocal chord ailments he publicly spoke about on Tuesday. He spoke passionately and eloquently, opening with an anecdote about his father, and his first experience at a technical conference. Then he discussed, with no small amount of awe, how technology has changed our world and about how Google should be affecting us.
"Technology should do the hard work so that people can get on with doing the things that make them happiest in life," he said.
The speech was candid and refreshing, and he capped it with an invitation for those in the audience to ask questions -- then answered them thoughtfully. It was a refreshingly warm and human way to end an event that is too often formulaic and focused entirely on new technology.
