The epitome of the Google I/O 2021

It’s been over two months since Google I/O 2021 wrapped up though we can’t get over all the exciting stuff that has come out from the virtual conference. With announcements like Smart Canvas in Google Workspaces, safer routing in Google Maps, an enhanced video conferencing initiative called Project Starline, new language(LaMDA) and multimodel(MUM) model; the I/O keynote this year also released Android 12 redesign with Material You and the biggest update to Wear OS ever.

Here’s a brief recap of the key announcements that were publicized at Google I/O 2021:

Android 12 Beta 1

Just like the past I/O keynotes, one of the most expected announcements of this year's Google I/O conference was the first beta release of Android 12. The new release provides an all-new interface. In addition to that, Android 12 boasts features based on the new design language Material You, which will even be used for designing the interfaces of Google's wearables, smart displays, and other hardware in the future.

Android 12 will haul gadget personalization to the next level from default launch animations to dynamic color theming to notification improvements to revamped widgets to video transcoding to graphical effects like a stretch on over scroll and blur.?

The I/O keynotes have done a lot of work under the covers improving things like lock contention, binder calls, and database queries, which all impacted the entire system. They have also improved app startup by optimizing the way of loading APKs and have introduced a new library called jetpack macro benchmark to help in testing and fixing performance issues in the application.

Privacy is one among the core themes of Android 12, and Google is stepping up on its efforts with the introduction of Privacy Dashboard, Private Compute Core, clipboard access alerts, and more. They also fixed a long-standing issue by allowing device scanning and pairing to use a new Bluetooth permission instead of requiring location permission.

Material You - Humanistic Approach to Design

Google officially unveiled its new design language, Material You, at Google I/O 2021. The newest redesign is coming at a given moment when the present Material design, which has been mostly unaltered since Android 9 Pie, had started getting up in years. Material You embraces emotion and expressiveness, with the main purpose of providing users infinite personalization through its dynamic theming competencies. Material You will not be restricted to only Android and will be coming to all main Google products, including Chrome OS, smart home devices, Wear OS, and more.

New Wear OS - The Biggest Update to Wear ever

Google finally stepped in to announce the next Wear OS update. Google has partnered with Samsung to revamp the platform to bring the best of Wear OS and Tizen. Along With getting a fresh coat of Material You, the main focus of this update was on battery life performance and the app ecosystem. There are a bunch of other updates like features from Fitbit, YouTube Music & Spotify app allowing for offline support, and Google Maps getting a new user interface & turn-by-turn directions feature. Another dandy improvement is the potential to download apps directly from the smartphone.

Smart canvas in Google Workspace

Google introduced Smart Canvas in the Google Workspace. It is a productivity-focused task collaboration system that lets users collaborate on single or multiple projects including pageless Docs and smarter meeting notes templates. It allows users on Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, & other productivity tools to communicate using built-in Google Chat rooms or video calls(Google Meet integration).

This is pretty cool and Google is also integrating a bunch of different things such as built-in noise cancellation and camera zoom adjustment to make sure that users are properly well lit and can be heard properly in every single meeting. This also comes with a couple of new features that let you customize your view.

Google Maps is getting a new Body

Google Maps integrated AI with navigation information to pin down braking occurrences on your route considering traffic and weather conditions. Detailed Street View is expanding to 50 new cities by the end of this year. It is designed in a way to provide details about sideroads, crossroads, and pedestrian islands along with showing off busy areas in a big city. Eco-friendly routes let you be environmentally conscious by recommending routes that will reduce fuel consumption. It includes a Live View feature to navigate indoors.

Google Chrome: New Manager Password

Google Chrome allows users to remember passwords using their built-in Password Manager tool. It provides you with an auto-fill option to move your password smoothly. Moving forward, Chrome will let users know if any of their saved passwords have been compromised by sending a password compromise notification. Chrome’s quick fix feature will show users the “Change Password” button and help them to change compromised passwords immediately.

Google Photos: Control your Memories

Google Photos is rolling out new features such as locked folders, cinematic moments, and an enhanced memories function. Cinematic moments uses AI to animate photos that have small movement and gives you a kind of animated pseudo animated photo. The locked folder feature will let you securely hide private photos. With the help of Machine Learning, Google Photos will let you create a highlight or album of images having similar objects or the same locations. Also, if you don’t want flashbacks from the past, Google Photos will let you hide so that they don’t appear on your Memories again giving you more control over your Memories.

A less fragmented shopping experience

At the Google I/O conference, there were updates for online shopping for both merchants and consumers. Merchants could promote their products across Google and consumers to pick up the shopping where they left off. For Android users, Google Lens will come with a “Search inside screenshot” button shortly that will help customers to scan relevant products from the picture.

LaMDA and MUM

One more interesting announcement was made about its new AI technology called LaMDA, Language Model for Dialogue Applications, which is built on Transformer. This new lambda technology is meant to provide users with a more human-like interaction on almost any topic. During the keynote, Google exemplified LaMDA answering questions as the planet Pluto.

However, Google also spoke about MUM(Multitask Unified Model) which is a thousand times more powerful search model than the previous one. It will allow users to come up with new information about the pictures, screenshots, text, audio, and video they shared i.e., where to find it, reviews, and more articles.

Project Starline: New Era of Video Calling

Video calling became a user-puller during this pandemic. Though video calling apps helped us to keep in touch with our loved ones, we still craved their presence in real life. Google’s Project Starline is a next-generation 3D video chat booth. It will allow users to have a face-to-face video call creating a 3D space so it looks like the person is actually there with you.

That's gonna wrap it up. Do let me know down in the comments if there’s anything you found interesting. I'll be hanging out there for a bit.