Google I/O Focuses on Devs: New Gaming Service, Improved GCM & Dev Console, & More

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Those crafty Googlers at Google I/O this year shared a ton of new info regarding the direction of Android, the Google Play Store and the services and software for developers and consumers. We wanted to share a quick breakdown of what they said.

First, Android activations are already up to 900 Million total. This means we will easily hit the 1 Billion marke before the end of the year. As far as app installs go, 48 Billion apps have been installed from the Google Play Store, with 2.5 Billion last month alone. This has had a huge positive effect for devlopers, as revenue payed out to developers has risen by 2.5x per user in just one month.

They also announced several new services for both developers and consumers. Here's a breakdown of new Google Play Services,

There are three new Google Maps APIs

• Fused Location Provide which is a new location API - it is faster & more accurate and uses far less power than before
• Geofencing - creates virtual fences
• Activity Recognition - helps the Google Maps recognize whether you are driving, walking, riding a bike and more

Google Created a new Google IM cross platform sign-on which got the press and developers pretty excited.

They also improved GCM (Google Cloud Messaging)

• Now supports persistent communication with servers
• Now supports upstream messaging
• Synchronizes notifications across multiple devices

Google also announced their new Google Play Gaming Services and Gaming APIs

• Cloud Safe - saves user data across multiple devices (you can finish level one of a game on your phone and start where you left off on your tablet for example.)
• Achievements and Leaderboards - encourages friendly competition with friends - check out your rankings compared to others - allows for cross platform comparisons
• Comprehensive Player Matching Service for Multiplayer - Easy to invite & quickly find and join friends or new people for multiplayer gaming

Android Studio - based upon IntelliJ

• Allows developers to be faster & more productive
• Includes multi-configuration editor - can make easy alterations for apps across multiple sized and multi-language devices & more

Google Play Developer Console has been improved with 5 exciting new features

• Optimization Tips
• App Translation Service
• Referral Tracking
• Revenue Graphs
• Beta Testing & Staged Rollouts

Finally, they also shared their new Google Play improvements including a UI that scales across multiple devices and a similar design for the web based version.

After this they showed off their new Google Music Subscription service called "All Access" which is a pretty big deal for the industry and will shake things up a bit. You can read more about that at our separate story from "CK." They topped things off by announced the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition Pure Android Unlocked device.

Of course, the keynote is still going on, and they are diving into Chrome, Google+ and much much more. For the most part the big announcements have happened, but we will share any other juicy details as we find them.

Source: Google I/O