Google Play Services 5.0

ANKUR KOTWAL: Hi. I hope you're ready to see all the exciting new stuff we have added in Google Play services 5.0. As you already know by now, Google Play Services rocks. I'm Ankur Kotwal, and I've subbed in for Magnus, as he well, got a little bit carried away with the whole rocks theme. But rest assured, he's recovering well. Let's just look at the latest additions in Google Play Services 5.0. It's one of our biggest releases to date, including new APIs like Android Wear, the Dynamic Security Provider, a major set of additions to Google Play Games Services, and the App Indexing API. We've also added new APIs for Google Cast, Google Drive, Google Wallet, Analytics and Mobile Ads. Whew, let's just dive right in. The first new API for Google Play Services 5.0 is Android Wearable Services. With the Data API, we can sync data between Android Wearables, and Android phones and tablets. This can be performed in three steps. The first is through messages. These are uni-directional, fire and forget, with delivery not guaranteed, and are useful for control signals, like media playback. You can use messages to start intents on the Wearable, too. Second, you can exchange assets. These are binary blogs such as images. And finally, we have DataItems, which are raw byte arrays for synchronizing data between these devices. And next new API is the Dynamic Security Provider. Think of this as providing an SSL library in Google Play Services. The advantage of including this in Google Play Services is that the Dynamic Security Provider will be updated along with Google Play Services, keeping the security fixes up-to-date. Google Play Games Services is itself not a new API, but this time, it has so many new features that we're celebrating it like a new API. We've now added quests, a new set of APIs to run time-based events for players, and rewards for completing them. To do this, developers send game activity data to the quest service whenever a player successfully wins a level, stops an alien, or saves a rare black sheep. This tells quests what's going on in the game, and developers can use that game activity to create new quests. By running quests on a regular basis, developers can create an unlimited number of new player experiences to drive re-engagement and retention. Saved Games is a new snapshot API, so developers can store a player's game progress for use across many screens, along with a cover image, description, and the time played. Players never need to complete level one again by having their progress stored with Google, and can see where they left off when developers attach a cover image and description. Game Profile collects a user's achievements, and rewards them with experience points. To activate experience points, you only need to confirm point distribution in the Google Play developer console. In fact, you don't even need to update your games to activate experience points. These sets of features are going to drive up gamer engagement, whilst allowing them to pick up a game on their phone, and continue it on their tablet. Maybe soon, gamers could be interacting on their Android Wearables, too. Exciting times ahead. The App Indexing API provides a way for developers to notify Google about deep links in their native mobile applications, and drive additional user engagement. Integrating with the App Indexing API allows the Google Search app to serve your app's history to users as instant search suggestions, providing fast and easy access to those inner pages in your app. The deep links reported using the Apps Indexing API are also used by Google to index your app's content, and surface them as deep links to the Google search results. How awesome is that? Now let's look at updates to existing APIs starting with Google Cast, which now has media tracks that enable closed caption support for Chromecast. Finally, I can watch my TV shows late at night with the volume low, and still know what's happening on screen. I love captions. The Google Drive API is getting very useful enhancements. Query results can be sorted. Folders can now be created offline, and the file picker can be filtered by mime type. Building great apps with the Google Drive storage backend has never been easier. With all these awesome APIs, your apps are going to go where they've never been before. So, what should we look at next? Ah, yes, let's dive into ways that we can drive monetization. And now ladies and gentleman, here is my new favorite Wallet API, Save card to Google. Wallet objects from Google take physical objects, like loyalty cards and offers from your wallet, and store it in the cloud. When a user clicks the Save card to Google button, the offer gets saved, and shows up in the user's Google Wallet app. And here's the best part. Geo-fenced in-store notifications prompt the user to show and scan digital cards at point-of-sales terminals, driving higher redemption. This also frees the user from having to carry around offers and loyalty cards, and provides a great purchasing experience. In fact, merchants are happier because they get increased offer proliferation. Customers are happier because they don't need to carry so many of their loyalty cards. And developers are happier for connecting these consumers to merchants. Google Analytics has introduced Enhanced Ecommerce, which provides visibility into the full customer journey. Adding the ability to measure product impressions, product clicks, view product details, adding a product to shopping cart, initiating a checkout process, internal promotions, transactions, and refunds. Together they help users to gain deeper insights into the performance of their business, including how far users progress through that shopping funnel, and where they're abandoning in the purchasing process. Enhanced Ecommerce allows users to analyze the effectiveness of their marketing and merchandising effort, including the impact of internal promotions, coupons, and affiliate marketing programs. Google Mobile Ads are a great way to monetize your apps, and with Google Play Services 5.0, you now have access to better in-app purchase ads. We've also made improvements to the Play Store in-app purchase API client, so it requires less effort to integrate. Well folks, Google Play Services 5.0 is huge and it's rolled out to devices everywhere. So now it's your turn. Show us what you can build with these awesome APIs.