Much rumored service becomes official, available today for Android, iOS and the web

Messaging has been one of the hot topics leading up to Google I/O, and today Vic Gundotra took to the stage and introduced the all new Google+ Hangouts. A cross-platform messaging service available starting today for Android, iOS and the web. 

We'll be taking a closer look at Hangouts once the dust settles, but one of the headline features is group video chat, available at no extra charge. We're also getting photos stored in albums, the ability to turn off history or save your chats, regular old group messaging, typing notifications, and notifications that will sync across all of your devices. 

A new messaging platform has been one of the most talked about items heading into Google I/O, and the app itself looks pretty nice. We're looking forward to putting it through its paces. It's a stand alone application, breaking free of the main Google+ app.

Follow our live coverage of the Google I/O keynote for the rest of the day's news!

A unified design across different screen sizes provides a better experience

In working to unify its different platforms, Google is rolling out updates to Google+ on the web and mobile apps to create a more consistent experience across screen sizes. The big focus from the keynote is on the web component, which has taken on a view with multiple "cards" and columns in the same way that you'd expect to see on the Google+ app on a tablet. The design is responsive and resizes based on the size of your screen and webpage to give more or less information. The cards feel more "alive" and move as you scroll along them. 

Google is also introducing new features for these web cards, such as auto hashtagging for images you post, related hashtags and posts based on cards you see, and many more. These features are just hitting the web starting today, but we would expect many of the same features to be folded into the mobile apps in their own way soon as well.

Google making strides into the classroom with new education focused Google Play service

Google is making a push to get technology, more specifically tablets into schools with the announcement today of Google Play for Education. Officially launching in the fall, submissions will be accepted soon. 

Google Play for Education will allow for the mass deployment of apps to education tablets. Not just apps either, books, videos, all available through Google Play for Education with mass licenses chargable against school purchase orders. 

6 elementary schools have been involved in a pilot scheme, with 550 different third-party apps deployed in a single day. This is huge for the education sector, and its great to see Google making strides into improving education with technology. 

Follow our live coverage of the Google I/O keynote for the rest of the day's news!

Earlier in the still-ongoing Google I/O keynote, Google announced Google Play Music All Access, a new subscription service aimed at providing any music you want for a monthly fee of $9.99 ($7.99 if you try the free trial before June 30th). The service will be available on both mobile devices and the web. The web version just went live for US users (internationla is coming 'soon') is asking us to join the free trial. We're not seeing it on Android just yet, but it's a safe bet that we'll be seeing it very soon.

Follow our live coverage of the Google I/O keynote for the rest of the day's news!

Save substantially on your mobile data usage when using Chrome and Youtube

As the Google I/O 2013 keynote gets moving along, Google is getting into some of the new technology it is using to save users data when using their products. First up is an update to the beta channel of Chrome for Android, which adds a "data compression" option in the settings to cut down on data usage. When turned on, it will use a compression proxy to pass pages through, converting images to the WebP format (which are 30-percent smaller than JPEG) and compressing all components of the page. The example given over a month of browsing with this Nexus 10 tablet above is a 46-percent savings in data usage. That's a big deal on today's limited data plans.

Also on the data usage front, Google is announcing that Youtube will start making the move to supporting the VP9 video format as a possible replacement for H.264. You don't have to know much about what VP9 does behind the scenes, but the end result is raw data savings with no loss in quality. Google used the example of a short HD video clip in VP9, which used about half of the bandwidth (~150MB vs. over 300MB) when compared to H.264. 

Google launches subscription music service, $9.99 per month, 30-day free trial

We're live in San Francisco for the Google I/O keynote presentation, where the search giant unveiled its new music subscription service, Google Play Music All Access. All Access includes such features as Listen Now, which uses Google's data to create a "never-ending" list of music based on your tastes. Demonstrating All Access on-stage at the keynote, Google's Chris Yerga showed the app's music discovery features, including a re-orderable queue of music and music discovery based on your existing library. Yerga described the service as "radio without rules."

Google Play Music All Access will become available today in the U.S., with additional countries following in the future. The price is $9.99 per month, with 30-day trials available. Even better, if you start a trial by June 30, you'll only pay $7.99 per month.

Keep watching our Google I/O keynote liveblog for continuing coverage of all the day's announcements.

The Samsung Galaxy S4. Plain old vanilla Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. It's real

Hugo Barra came back to the stage at Google I/O and dropped a huge bombshell on us. The Samsung Galaxy S4 'Google Edition' that has been rumored in the run up to the event is indeed real, and it's going on sale via Google Play! 

This Galaxy S4 runs Android 4.2.2 just as the regular one does, only this one has absolutely no Touchwiz on it whatsoever. This one runs pure, un-tampered, Google fresh Android. 

Available from Google Play on June 26 in the U.S, compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile US. 16GB of on board storage expandable via microSD card, LTE, unlockable bootloader, and prompt software updates. Google promises that this Galaxy S4 will provide a "Nexus user experience." Wow. All this will cost $649.

So, is this now the Galaxy S4 of your dreams? 

Follow our live coverage of the Google I/O keynote for the rest of the day's news!

Carefully manage app updates for a small set of core users to squash bugs

Google I/O 2013 is plugging along today, and one of the biggest features from a developer point of view is that they can now manage both Beta Testing and Staged Rollouts for updates to their apps. Rather than using a third party system to offer plain .apk downloads to certain users, developers can now plug into Google+ to give certain users access to early updates directly from the Play Store that no one else can see. This way, only the people that developers want to beta test will have access to the latest. Staged Rollouts is similar, but isn't tied to specific users. With this function, developers can choose to only push an update to a specific percentage of their users -- say 10-, 20-, or 30-percent -- and ramp up over time. This way you can get a slow and steady stream of input from users to address.

Feedback and comments during beta testing and staged rollouts isn't posted publicly to the Play Store, but rather goes directly to the developer to manage bug reports and test out the new features. As the rollout picks up, things will eventually go public so users can give a proper review in the Play Store. We look forward to seeing how many developers take advantage of this.

Android tablets are growing in popularity, and Google recognizes this and is setting out to make great tablet apps more visible in the Play Store. Starting today, there will be a new "designed for tablets" section in each of the top charts tabs in the Play Store when accessed from an Android tablet. Great news for Android tablet users and developers of great tablet apps alike. 

Follow our live coverage of the Google I/O keynote for the rest of the day's news!

Brand new Android IDE to make it easier to build and preview apps

Google has launched a brand new IDE (integrated development environment) for building Android apps at today's Google I/O keynote presentation. Android Studio is based on the community edition of IntelliJ, and includes a number of unique tools designed to make the development and previewing process more easy.

Among these are the ability to preview strings in code as if they were hard-coded, see colors based on color codes and even preview layouts on different device sizes -- everything from a 3.7-inch phone to a 10-inch tablet. It's even possible to preview different languages and see if everything will fit right with overflowing.

The developers in the room seemed really excited about the new previewing capabilities of Android Studio, and we're sure this will be hugely useful to both seasoned devs and newcomers.

Keep watching our live coverage of the I/O keynote for more news from the show.