Google I/O 2016: There was nothing new, or exciting about this keynote

Google I/O 2016’s keynote, which lasted for exactly two hours had very little to get excited about, because frankly there was nothing new on offer.

Written by Karthekayan Iyer
Updated: May 19, 2016 01:13 PM IST

4 min read

Google I/0 2016: Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressing the opening keynote at the annual developer conference. (Source: AP)

Google I/O 2016, for me, had only one key takeaway — the search giant has turned vulnerable and is conceding to industry demands. Google I/O 2016’s keynote, which lasted for exactly two hours, had very little to get excited about, because frankly there was nothing new on offer.

Google I/O 2016 was definitely the most boring one in recent times, and CEO Sundar Pichai looked unrehearsed during his keynote address. He started by talking about I/O’s significance and company’s values since its start under Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

But the company’s announcements were less exciting, and it looked like the company was doing something to compete with the industry, rather than compel the industry to do something.

The first big announcement was Google Assistant, a smart assistant that uses conversational UI for interaction, and relies on natural learning for smart replies. Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana use similar algorithms for their conversation-based smart assistants.