What�s next for Google payment and loyalty experiences

Posted by Pali Bhat, VP of Payment Products

Thousands of apps and millions of stores accept Android Pay, a simpler and more
secure mobile payment experience. Android Pay is now available in 10 markets,
with more coming soon, including Brazil, Canada, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. And
in addition to our already announced href="https://blog.google/topics/shopping-payments/android-pay-partners-visa-checkout-and-masterpass/">Visa
and Mastercard partnerships, we'll soon enable a streamlined mobile checkout
experience for PayPal users.

The newest ways to pay with Google

Yesterday, we announced the Google Payment API, which lets people pay in app or
online with any verified credit or debit card saved to their Google Account, via
products like Google Play, Chrome and YouTube.

Paying with Google in the Wish app

For users, the option to pay with Google means breezing through checkout without
needing to remember and type multiple lines of payment details. You simply
choose your preferred card, enter a security code or authenticate with your
Android device, and check out.

Developers who adopt this API can enable an easy-to-use checkout experience for
their customers. Sign up for href="https://www.google.com/payments/solutions">early access to the new
Google Payment API.

In the upcoming months, we'll also enable people in the U.S. to send or receive
payments via the Google Assistant. On your Google Home or Android device, it's
as simple as saying "Ok Google, send $10 to Jane for pizza." All you need is a
debit card linked to your Google account.

Pay friends on Google Assistant

Connect with customers before, during and after purchase

We're also announcing new ways for merchants to engage and reward customers
before they walk into the store and after they've left.

The Card Linked Offers API drives customer loyalty by providing a new channel to
deliver targeted offers, and Panera Bread is one of the first merchants who will
roll out this new capability nationally. MyPanera members who save their loyalty
card to Android Pay can discover offers and learn about new menu items, surfaced
by Android Pay when they are at the store. The offer is redeemed when you use
your MyPanera account at checkout.

Card Linked Offers for Panera Bread in the Android Pay app

We're also making it easier for Android Pay users to add loyalty programs. For
example, Walgreens Balance Rewards� members who manually apply their loyalty
account with a phone number and use Android Pay will receive a notification on
their phone that easily enables them to link that loyalty card to Android Pay
for future visits. This experience is powered by our smart tap technology, which
Walgreens has fully deployed across their 8,000+ U.S. stores.

There's more�we're collaborating with href="https://www.clover.com/">Clover, a First Data company, to expand our
smart tap technology beyond national retailers to businesses of all sizes. With
the upcoming integration of smart tap in href="https://www.clover.com/developers">Clover's developer APIs, you'll be
able to build Android apps for loyalty, coupon and gift card redemption and new
features, such as order ahead and tap for pick up.

Visit href="http://developers.google.com/payments">developers.google.com/payments
for the latest on all of our Google Payment, Loyalty and Offers APIs.

What�s New in Android: O Developer Preview 2 & More

Posted by: Dave Burke, VP of Engineering

With billions of Android devices around the world, Android has surpassed our wildest expectations. Today at Google I/O, we showcased a number of ways we�re pushing Android forward, with the O Release, new tools for developers to help create more performant apps, and an early preview of a project we call Android Go -- a new experience that we�re building for entry-level devices.

Fluid experiences in Android O

It's pretty incredible what you can do on mobile devices today, and how easy it is to rely on them as computers in our pockets. In the O release we've focused on creating fluid experiences that make Android even more powerful and easy to use, and today we highlighted some of those:

• Picture-in-picture: lets users manage two tasks simultaneously, whether it�s video calling your friend while checking your calendar, or reading a new recipe while watching a video on a specific cooking technique. We�ve designed PIP to provide seamless multitasking on any size screen, and it�s easy for apps to support it.


• Notification dots extend the reach of notifications, a new way for developers to surface activity in their app, driving engagement. Built on our unique and highly regarded notification system, dots work with zero effort for most apps - we even extract the color of the dot from your icon. 


• Autofill with Google simplifies setting up a new device and synchronizing passwords by bringing Chrome's Autofill feature to Android. Once a user opts-in, Autofill will work out-of-the-box for most apps. Developers can optimize their apps for Autofill by providing hints about the type of data expected or add support in custom views. 


• A new homescreen for Android TV makes it easy for users to find, preview, and watch content provided by apps. Apps can publish one or more channels, and users can control the channels that appear on the homescreen. You�ll be able to get started with creating channels using the new TvProvider support library APIs. 


• Smart Text Selection: In Android O, we�re applying on-device machine learning to copy/paste, to let Android recognize entities like addresses, URLs, telephone numbers, and email addresses. This makes the copy/paste experience better by selecting the entire entity and surfacing the right apps to carry out an action based on the type of entity.


• TensorFlow Lite: As Android continues to take advantage of machine learning to improve the user experience, we want our developer partners to be able to do the same. Today we shared an early look at TensorFlow Lite, an upcoming project based on TensorFlow, Google�s open source machine learning library. TensorFlow Lite is specifically designed to be fast and lightweight for embedded use cases. Since many on-device scenarios require real-time performance, we�re also working on a new Neural Network API that TensorFlow can take advantage of to accelerate computation. We plan to make both of these available to developers in a maintenance update to O later this year, so stay tuned!  

(L) Android O: Picture-in-picture, (R) Android O: Notification dots

Working on the Vitals in Android

We think Android�s foundations are critical, so we�re investing in Android Vitals, a project focused on optimizing battery life, startup time, graphic rendering time, and stability. Today we showcased some of the work we�ve done so far, and introduced new tools to help developers understand power, performance, and reliability issues in their apps:

• System optimizations: in Android O, we�ve done a lot of work across the system to make apps run faster and smoother. For example we made extensive changes in our runtime - including new optimizations like concurrent compacting garbage collection, code locality, and more. 


• Background limits: up to now it�s been fairly easy for apps to unintentionally overuse resources while they�re in the background, and this can adversely affect the performance of the system. So in O, we've introduced new limits on background location and wi-fi scans, and changes in the way apps run in the background. These boundaries prevent overuse -- they�re about increasing battery life and freeing up memory.


• New Android Vitals Dashboards in the Play Console: today we launched six Play Console dashboards to help you pinpoint common issues in your apps - excessive crash rate, ANR rate, frozen frames, slow rendering, excessive wakeups, and stuck wake locks, including how many users are affected, with guidance on the best way to address the issues. You can visit the Play Console today to see your app's data, then learn how to address any issues.

Android Go

Part of Android�s mission is to bring computing to everyone. We�re excited about seeing more users come online for the first time as the price of entry level smart phones drop, and we want to help manufacturers continue to offer lower-cost devices that provide a great experience for these users. Today we gave a sneak peek of a new experience that we�re building specifically for Android devices that have 1GB or less of memory -- Internally we call it �Android Go,� and it�s designed around three things

• OS: We�re optimizing Android O to run smoothly and efficiently on entry-level devices


• Apps: We�re also designing Google apps to use less memory, storage space, and mobile data, including apps such as YouTube Go, Chrome, and Gboard. 


• Play: On entry-level devices, Play store will promote a better user experience by highlighting apps that are specifically designed for these devices -- such as apps that use less memory, storage space, and mobile data -- while still giving users access to the entire app catalog.

The Android Go experience will ship in 2018 for all Android devices that have 1GB or less of memory. We recommend getting your apps ready for these devices soon -- take a look at the Building for Billions to learn about the importance of offering a useful offline state, reducing APK size, and minimizing battery and memory use.



O Developer Preview 2, Now in Public Beta

Today�s release of O Developer Preview 2 is our first beta-quality candidate, available to test on your primary phone or tablet. We�re inviting those who want to try the beta release of Android O to enroll now at android.com/beta -- it�s an incredibly convenient way to preview Android O on your Nexus 5X, 6P, and Player, as well as Pixel, Pixel XL, or Pixel C device.



With more users starting to get Android O on their devices through the Android Beta program, now is the time to test your apps for compatibility, resolve any issues, and publish an update as soon as possible. See the migration guide for steps and a recommended timeline.



Later today you�ll be able to download the updated tools for developing on Android O, including the latest canaries of Android Studio, SDK, and tools, Android O system images, and emulators. Along with those, you�ll be able to download support library 26.0.0 beta and other libraries from our new Maven repo. The change to Maven from SDK Manager means a slight change to your build configuration, but gives you much more flexibility in how you integrate library updates with your CI systems.



When you�re ready to get started developing with Android O, visit the O Developer Preview site for details on all of the features you can use in your apps, including notification channels and dots, picture-in-picture, autofill, and others. APIs have changed since the first developer preview, so take a look at the diff report to see where your code might be affected.



Thanks for the feedback you�ve given us so far. Please keep it coming, about Android O features, APIs, issues, or requests -- see the Feedback and Bugs page for details on where to report feedback.

The Power Of �Early Access�

By Karolis Balciunas, VC & Startups Business Development Manager, Google Play

If you have ever launched a mobile app, you know full well that launching your app
into the world successfully requires more than publishing it and hoping for the
best.

It�s the diligent testing, constant user feedback loop and incremental tweaks
leading up to that special launch moment that truly count.

The Google Play Developer Console gives developers robust tools to do beta tests
or experiment with how they market their apps to users through the Play store
listing. Getting this critical early feedback from users requires just that �
users. And as a developer working on a new product that isn�t fully launched
yet, how do you find people to try your new app and take the time to give you
feedback?

1 Million Tester Installs And Counting

At Google I/O in May, we href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/whats-new-in-google-play-at-io-2016.html">unveiled
a new destination on Google Play to address this dilemma head on. Together with
29 app and game partners, we launched an �Early Access� collection that made
select new Android titles that are running an open beta available for anyone to
try before they officially launch. It was an immediate hit. Early-adopter users
were eager and willing to send developers actionable, private feedback in
exchange for an opportunity to get their hands onto the latest exciting apps and
games. Most importantly, the feedback was objective and candid as it did not
come from their friends and family who are often afraid to hurt their feelings.
In just over a month since the collection became available to all users, open
beta titles have been installed over 1 million times and demand is only growing.

3 Powerful Stories

Our launch partners experienced the power of Early Access in various ways.
Peer-based language practice developer href="https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.lingbe.app">Lingbe was eager
to validate the concept of their app connecting natives with language learners
via voice conversations, which meant they needed to connect with a critical mass
of possible users around the world from different language and cultural
backgrounds. In just a few weeks, "the surge in users in addition to our current
fan base meant that we've had Brazilians practicing with Spanish users and
talking about their hobby in photography, Mexicans making friends with people
from India, and Filipinos talking to Moroccans!"

href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.readfeedinc.readfeed&e=-EnableAppDetailsPageRedesign">Readfeed,
one of the first online book clubs on Android, relied on Early Access to solicit
feature requests, identify bugs, locate new and optimize existing target markets
as well as build a sizable reader community. They stated that "early access
confirmed that our target market exists and that we have something that they
need. I don't think we'd be in the same place right now without it. It enabled
us to validate and effectively iterate on our idea from day one."

Finally, href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.drippler.assistant">Drippler
participated in Early Access to test their new "Wiz" app and understand their
beta title's appeal to their target demographic. Their performance in the Early
Access collection as well as private feedback from thousands of newly acquired
beta testers allowed them to polish the app before the launch and gave them
confidence that their users will enjoy it."

These three developers� stories show us just a few ways that Early Access can
help developers build great new apps and games, and it shows the value of
getting early feedback from beta testers before launching more broadly.

Get Involved

If you are a developer getting ready to launch on Google Play, you can nominate
your app or game to be part of Early Access. Learn more href="http://goo.gl/forms/p8ueXdGsuuVMdVED3">here.

New titles are added weekly and thousands of users are looking to experiment
with new and exciting ideas.

Create Intelligent, Context-Aware Apps with the Google Awareness APIs

Posted by Bhavik Singh, Product Manager

Last month at Google I/O 2016 we announced the new Google Awareness APIs,
enabling your apps to intelligently react to user context using snapshots and
fences with minimal impact on system resources.

Today we�re proud to announce that the Google Awareness API is available to all
developers through Google Play services.

Using 7 different types of context�including location, weather, user activity,
and nearby beacons�your app can better understand your users� current
situations, and use this information to provide optimized and customized
experiences.

The Awareness API offers two ways to take advantage of context signals within
your app:

• The Snapshot API lets your app easily request information
  about the user's current context. For example, "give me the user's current
  location and the current weather conditions".
  
• The Fence API lets your app react to changes in user�s
  context - and when it matches a certain set of conditions. For example, "tell me
  whenever the user is walking and their headphones are plugged in". Similar to
  the Geofencing API, once an awareness fence is registered, it can send callbacks
  to your app even when it's not running.

As a single, simplified surface, the Awareness APIs combine optimally processed
context signals in new ways that were not previously possible, providing more
accurate and insightful context cues, while also managing system resources to
save battery and minimize bandwidth.

We�ve worked closely with some of our partners, who have already found amazing
ways to integrate context awareness into their apps:

href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trulia.android&hl=en">Trulia,
an online residential real estate site, uses our Fence API to suggest
open houses. When the weather is perfect and the user is walking around near a
house they are interested in, Trulia sends a notification reminding them to stop
by. This sort of tailored notification can help users engage with open houses at
the perfect time for them.

href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.superplayer.jukebot&hl=en">SuperPlayer
Music, on the other hand, uses our Snapshot API and Fence API to suggest the
perfect music to match your mood. Whether you�re just finishing up a run and
beginning to stretch, setting off on a long car ride, or just getting to the
gym, their assistant can understand your context and suggest the right playlist
for you.

With our initial set of signals and our awesome partners, we�re just getting
started with the Awareness APIs. Join us on a journey to build tailored
experiences within your apps, by getting started with the href="https://developers.google.com/awareness/?utm_campaign=android_launch_awarenessapi_062716&utm_source=anddev&utm_medium=blog">Google Awareness API developer
documentation, and learn more by watching our Google I/O session