Google I/O 2017: Empowering developers to build the best experiences across platforms

By Jason Titus, Vice President, Developer Product Group


It's great to be in our backyard again for Google I/O to connect with developers
around the world. The 7,200 attendees at Shoreline Amphitheatre, millions of
viewers on the livestream, and
thousand of developers at local I/O Extended events across 80+
countries heard about our efforts to make the lives of developers easier --
allowing them to focus on the problems they're trying to solve by minimizing the
pain points of building a product.


Earlier this morning, our CEO Sundar Pichai talked
about our various billion-user platforms. Whether it's Android or Chrome or the
mobile Web, our success would not have been possible without the developer
community. And during our Developer
Keynote, we covered our heavy investments in tools and services for
developers who build on our platforms every day.


We have a lot to cover over the next three days. Let's take a closer look at the
major developer news at I/O so far:

Platforms that connect developers to billions of users around the
world

• Android
  O Developer Preview 2 � Get a look at the next release of Android O focused
  on fluid experiences that make Android even more useful, and our efforts to
  optimize battery life, startup time, graphic rendering time, and stability.
  Early adopters can opt in to the Android O Beta Program at android.com/beta and run Android O now.
  


• Project
  Treble � Last week, we also introduced a new Android framework designed to
  help reduce the time and effort it takes device makers to upgrade a phone to a
  new version of Android, starting with Android O.
  


• Android
  Go � We're optimizing Android to run smoothly on entry-level devices,
  starting with the O release. We're also designing Google apps to use less
  memory, storage space, and mobile data, including apps such as YouTube Go,
  Chrome, and Gboard.
  


• Kotlin
  � Android is officially supporting the Kotlin programming language, in addition
  to the Java language and C++. Kotlin is a brilliantly designed, mature,
  production-ready language that we believe will make Android development faster
  and more fun.
  


• Android
  Studio 3.0 Canary � Our new preview includes three major features to
  accelerate development flow: a new suite of app performance profiling tools to
  quickly diagnose performance issues, support for the Kotlin programming
  language, and increased Gradle build speeds for large sized app projects.
  


• Mobile Web � AMP and Progressive Web
  Apps (PWAs) are re-defining
  modern mobile web development. AMP gets content in front of users fast and PWAs
  deliver app-focused experiences that are reliable, fast and engaging. We're
  seeing success stories
  from all around the world - travel company Wego has rolled out a
  successful AMP based PWA and Forbes has seen user
  engagement double since launching a PWA. If you're wondering how good your
  current web experience is, you can use Lighthouse - an
  automated tool for measuring web-page quality. Be sure to tune in this afternoon
  for the
  Mobile Web: State of the Union talk to hear more about building rich mobile
  web experiences.

Infrastructure and services to take mobile apps and the Web to the
next level

• Firebase
  � At last year's I/O, we expanded Firebase to a full mobile development platform
  with products to help you build your app and grow your business. Over a million
  developers now use Firebase, and we're doubling down on our efforts to simplify
  more every-day developer challenges. We're giving more insights to understand
  app performance through Firebase Performance Monitoring, introducing integration
  between Hosting and Cloud Functions, adding support for Phone Number
  Authentication, and continuing to improve Analytics in a number of ways. We've
  also started open
  sourcing our SDKs.
  


• Mobile web
  developer certifications � At I/O'16 we launched the Associate Android
  Developer Certification. This year, we're adding two new certifications for web
  developers: the Mobile
  Sites Certification and the Mobile Web
  Specialist Certification.

Powerful tools to acquire and engage new users; grow successful
businesses

• Google
  Play Console � We announced several powerful, new features and reports in
  the Play Console to help developers improve their app's performance, manage
  releases with confidence, reach a global audience, and grow their business. The
  Play Console also has a new name, to reflect its broadened business uses, and a
  fresh look to make it easier to get things done.
  


• Android
  Instant Apps � We opened Android Instant Apps, a new way to run Android apps
  without requiring installation, to all
  developers. Now anyone can build and publish an instant app. There are also
  more than 50 new experiences available for users to try out from a variety of
  brands, such as Jet, New York Times, Vimeo and Zillow.
  


• Payments, Monetization & Ads � We introduced a Google Payment API that
  enables developers to give their customers the ability to pay in apps and online
  with credit or debit cards saved to their Google Account. New AdMob integration
  with Google Analytics for Firebase helps them monetize efficiently and updates
  to Universal Apps Campaigns will help them grow their user base.

New interfaces to push the limits of what's possible

• Actions
  on Google for the Google Assistant � We brought Actions on Google to phones,
  introduced new features and functionality, improved our SDK and more. We also
  launched the Actions Console, a new developer console that helps developers work
  as a team, and collect data on app usage, performance and user discovery
  patterns. This new console is integrated with the Firebase and Google Cloud
  consoles.
  


• VR
  and AR at Google � We'll have more to share on the latest Daydream platform
  features and developer tools during our "VR and AR at Google" session tomorrow
  (May 18) at 9:30 AM PT in the Amphitheatre and on the livestream.

It's important to us that developers are successful. In addition to building
products that help solve developer challenges, we're on the ground in over 130
countries, growing and expanding the developer community through programs such
as Women Techmakers & Google
Developer Groups (GDGs).
We're also investing in training programs like Google Developers
Certification and courses through Udacity and other partners to help
developers deepen their technical capability. We're also excited to announce two
large multi-product developer events, Google Developer Days, which are planned
for Europe (September 2017 in Krakow, Poland) and India (December 2017 in
Bangalore, India). If you are interested to find out more, sign up for updates
on g.co/gdd2017.


During Google I/O, attendees and viewers have an opportunity to dive deep into
a number of these areas with 14 content tracks and 140+ breakout sessions --
covering Android to Assistant to VR -- and all livestreamed. We've also launched
over 70 codelabs to get
developers up and running with our latest APIs today.


Whether it's Android, Chrome, Play, VR/AR, the Cloud, and the Mobile Web � we're
constantly investing in the platforms that connect developers to billions of
users around the world. Thank you to the continued support and feedback from the
developer community.

I/O 2017: Everything new in the Google Play Console

Posted by Vineet Buch, Director of Product Management, Google Play Apps & Games

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Google Play continues to grow rapidly around the world, thanks to our ecosystem of developers building high quality and engaging app experiences. There are now 2 billion monthly active Android devices. People in 190 countries downloaded 82 billion apps from the Play Store in the last year and the number of developers with more than 1 million monthly installs grew by 35 percent year on year. We've made huge investments to make purchasing quick and easy by offering direct carrier billing with 140 operators that reach 900M devices every month. These, and other efforts, have made the number of buyers on Google Play grow by almost 30 percent in the last year.

Since we launched the Google Play Console in 2012, we've continued to add features to help you do much more than just publish apps. People in a variety of roles at app and game companies, large and small, carry out tasks like running beta tests, analyzing crashes, responding to customer reviews, evaluating A/B experiments on store listings, pulling financial reports, and more.

Today at Google I/O, we're announcing new and improved features to help you improve your app's performance and quality, and grow your business on Google Play.

Statistics

^UPDATED The statistics page for your app now gives you quicker, more flexible access to important data about your business. Compare two different metrics and break them down by a dimension. Select any date range you want, view a breakdown of your data, and even access hourly stats.

Android vitals

^NEW Understand your app's Android vitals so you can fix bad behaviors, improve your app experience, and increase your star rating. View aggregated, anonymized device data from people who have opted in their devices to understand three crucial aspects of your app's performance: stability (crash rates and App Not Responding [ANR] rates), battery usage (stuck wake locks and excessive wakeups), and render time (slow rendering and frozen UI frames). Learn more about Android vitals.

^UPDATED The ANRs & crashes page has also been updated with larger crash coverage and now benefits from a higher volume of data.

Release management

^NEW Use the new release dashboard to track a release as it happens. By monitoring how your release is affecting important metrics, you can be confident that everything is going as planned or you can quickly halt your rollout if anything looks out of the ordinary.

^NEW Publish Android Instant Apps with the same release management flow you're familiar with from publishing apps on Google Play. Iterate quickly with a development track, gather feedback from trusted testers on a pre-release track, and when you're ready, release to production. Get started with Android Instant Apps.

^NEW The new device catalog will help ensure you're offering a great user experience on the widest range of devices. Search and filter across rich device data for thousands of devices certified by Google. The catalog even shows you your installs, rating, and revenue contributed by device type to help you make the right decisions. You can now also set device exclusion rules by performance indicators like RAM and system on chip. With more granular controls you can exclude fewer devices and offer the best experience on all devices your app supports. Learn more about the device catalog.

^NEW For something as important as your app signing key, there's no room for error. With app signing in the Play Console, you now have the option to securely transfer your key to Google to manage on your behalf. You'll benefit from Google's industry leading security and be able to opt-in for upcoming assistive services like app optimizations for APK size. Once opted-in to this service, the Play Store will deliver versions of your APK optimized for the screen density and native architecture of each target device type, saving data and device storage for your users. Learn more about app signing.







^UPDATED The pre-launch report, powered by Firebase Test Lab, shows you the results of testing your alpha or beta app on real devices in the lab so you can spot and fix issues before you launch, so they won't affect your rating. The report has been updated with more device test coverage including Android O devices, and new controls, like being able to provide credentials so your app can be tested behind a login.

User acquisition

^NEW The acquisition report helps you understand where visitors to your store listing are coming from and whether they go on to install and buy things in your app. The report now includes retained installer data. This reveals which channels and geographies drive valuable users who keep your app installed over periods of up-to 30 days, helping you optimize your marketing efforts.

Financial reports

^NEW Subscriptions are the fastest growing business on Google Play � the number of active subscribers has doubled in the last year. With the subscriptions dashboard, see how your subscriptions are performing and make better decisions to grow your business. Understand and analyze total subscribers, revenue, retention, and churn across multiple dimensions.

User feedback

^UPDATED Reviews are a valuable channel you can use to engage with people who have your app installed directly. Reviews analysis now covers more languages to help you gather insights from reviews to improve your app. Updated ratings summarizes how users have updated their ratings and reviews, including the effect any replies you made had on those updates. Reviews history shows you the history of your conversation with a user. Finally, we are rolling out the ability to report reviews which do not meet the posting policy guidelines.

Watch us introduce the new Play Console features live at I/O 2017

Tune in live to watch the 'What's new in Google Play at I/O 2017' session, which starts at 12:30pm PT on Thursday, May 18. The team is excited to share all the features we've been working on.

We're also presenting deeper dives into all of our new features and sharing best practices to help you succeed on Google Play. Watch all the Google Play I/O sessions live or afterwards on YouTube:



Day 1, May 17

• New release management and device targeting tools in the Play Console or: how I learned to stop worrying and love Android's diversity!


• No one likes crashing or janky apps! Engineer for high performance with tools from Android & Google Play

Day 2, May 18

• Best practices to slim down your app size


• Making data on Google Play work for you


• How to secure and optimize your app with Google Play app signing


• 10 Google Play Console secrets to optimize Android apps for stellar user retention

Day 3, May 19

• Boost user retention with behavioral insights


• Make more money with subscriptions on Google Play


• Android apps for Chromebooks and large screen devices


• Tools and tips to boost user engagement and retention


• Android TV: How to engage more users and earn more revenue

And be sure to watch the Google Play Awards on day two, which will once again recognize outstanding developers that continue to set the bar for quality apps and games.

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