Music, Movies and Home Automation, Oh my! – The Google I/O 2011 Keynote

by Toni McQuilken May 10, 2011 1:37 PM – Leave your thoughts

Well, if you’re like me, you were watching the live stream of Google’s I/O keynote today and couldn’t stop saying “wow”. We’ll be covering more of this in-depth later, but a few highlights:

Google Music Beta is now open for invite requests – go to music.google.com/about to request yours
Movies are now available to stream from the Android marketplace
Google has struck a deal with all the major carriers and handset developers to set a timeline for updating handsets to the most current version, assuming hardware supports it. They also got an agreement to support handsets for 18 months from launch with those updates.
Google is moving into the accessories space, with a new ADK for building them. With luck, we’ll start to see accessories for Android along the lines of the “Made for iPod” stuff Apple has.
Home automation. Seriously. Google is creating protocols to allow Android to interface with every appliance, light and thermostat in your house. A lot of that will depend on manufacturers creating Android’compatible stuff, but this is a very interesting space to watch.

There was more, but those were the main highlights that had me on the edge of my seat and practically jumping up and down. Google even addressed the fragmentation problem, saying Ice Cream Sandwich will support every platform, and will be “One OS”. Google is taking Apple on head-to-head now, in every way it can. This battle just got serious, and Google has fired a few shots that mean it doesn’t plan to go down, fight or no fight.

Visit the link below for a livestream of the ongoing festivities!

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers#p/l

Tags: Android, Android Home Automation, Android@Home, AndroidTapp.com, Google Accesories, Google I/O, Google I/O 2011, Google Music, Music Beta by Google

Categorised in: Announcements, News