Google I/O is the biggest date in the firm's calendar: it's the conference where it gets everyone together in one big room (actually, this year it was a tent) in California to reveal all the cool stuff it has been working on. This year was more focused than most. It's the first I/O since the company restructured itself into Alphabet, hiving off the wilder projects such as Google Glass, self-driving cars and life-extension research into other subsidiaries. Gone are the days of livestreaming a parachute jumper wearing Google Glass from the I/O stage. But that doesn't mean the company wasn't trying to impress with more down-to-earth revelations.

Google jumped into the messaging and digital assistant spaces Wednesday at its I/O developer conference with the Allo and Duo apps, powered by Google Assistant. Chat app Allo is a "smart messaging app that learns over time to make conversations more expressive and productive," according to a Google engineering director, Erik Kay. Duo, meanwhile, is a cross-platform video-chat app similar to FaceTime. Both tap into Google Assistant, a platform which Google CEO Sundar Pichai described as "a conversational assistant" that will allow users to have "an ongoing, two-way dialog with Google." About 20 percent of US Google searches are now conducted by voice, in large part because of Google's strength in natural-language processing, Pichai said, which it has spent the last decade building. "Our abilty [in natural-language processing] is far ahead of what other assistants can do," Pichai said.

As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com's Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus' early lead in fabricating artificial worlds. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device. That feature, called Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater a few blocks from its Mountain View, California, headquarters. It is the first time that Google has held the conference in its hometown since the inaugural event in 2006.

Everyone has a digital assistant these days. Microsoft has baked Cortana into the heart of all its software and Google has just announced a major revamp to what it now calls Google assistant. Apple, on the other hand, has seen its digital assistant Siri fall behind the competition in recent years, but the company is now set to make the biggest overhaul to the feature yet by bringing it to the desktop. The long-rumored move was given more credibility this week when MacRumors published leaked screenshots from a reliable source, showing Siri working on Mac OS X, the Apple desktop operating system that is due to be updated next month. The leaked images show a Siri icon in the menu bar as well as a recognizable waveform logo situated in the part of the interface known as the Dock.

Google today said it was unveiling a virtual assistant tool at its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View called Google Assistant. This appears to be similar to what Google Now can do already, but it appears to be an upgraded version of it. You can ask a question for an answer, and follow up with multiple questions, with Google picking the conversation out and returning the right answer. The service is integrated in its new conversational user interface products: Google Assistant is also built into Allo, its new independent chat bot app, as well as Google Home, its Amazon Echo competitor. "Think of the assistant, we think of it as a conversational assistant, we want users to have an ongoing two-way dialog," CEO Sundar Pichai said.

Google wants to play an even bigger role in managing people's daily lives, while also nudging them into an alternate reality, as the Internet company responds to competitive threats posed by Facebook, Amazon and Apple. As part of an onslaught of upcoming products, Google will implant a more personable form of artificial intelligence into an Internet-connected device called Home, which echoes the Echo, Amazon.com's Meanwhile, Google will also delve deeper into the still-nascent realm of virtual reality with a system called Daydream that's meant to challenge Facebook-owned Oculus's early lead in fabricating artificial worlds. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing them on a device. That feature, called Instant Apps, might have been the biggest breakthrough that Google announced Wednesday at its annual developers conference held in an amphitheater located a few blocks from its Mountain View, California, headquarters.

The world got its first glimpse of Allo at Google's yearly I/O conference on Wednesday. Its creators hope the Android and iOS app will transcend similar services like Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Receiving a photo of clam linguini prompted Allo to offer responses like "Yummy!" and "I love linguini!" Known as Smart Reply, the feature may one day keep thumbs from worrying about autocorrect, as full conversations could be had at one tap per message. As Allo gets to "know" its user over time, other responses, such as "I wish I wasn't allergic," could conceivably be produced. The app will do more than just recognize images and suggest responses, however.

Google has joined the war to be your digital butler. Speaking to a packed amphitheater of developers here, Alphabet's flagship company on Wednesday unveiled a hot-rodded personal assistant it says will let people control their homes, book movies, search the internet, ask follow-up questions about an Italian restaurant and sort through dog pictures using voice commands. The salvo places Google in the middle of a contest among technology giants to build an artificial intelligence that hold consumers' hands as they navigate the real world. Perhaps with an eye towards modern politics, Google declined to give its personal aide a gendered name. Its main physical form is a small, white, buttonless speaker called Google Home. It looks similar to Amazon's Echo, its own smart speaker powered by Alexa.

Google I/O opened with the tech giant launching a new social smart chat app called Allo. It's a mobile-only app that works just like Hangouts but it's "smarter" in a sense that it has a chat bot that will answer your queries when you have no one else to chat with. It's not a robot nanny but a chat assistant-slash-artificial intelligence that does smart search so you don't have to do it on your own. Just say'Ok Google' and see what The Google Assistant will serve up. Officially known as The Google Assistant, this concept is said to be more of an "ambient experience" according to Google CEO Sunday Pichai.

The device is similar to the Amazon Echo, which was released in the US in 2014. Although derided when it was first unveiled, the Echo has become a fixture in many American homes, although it has not been released elsewhere. But despite being well behind Amazon in releasing its own speaker, Google is counting on its AI prowess, voice recognition technology and the stash of data it already has on users to gain an advantage. By always listening, Google Home can respond to any queries just by users saying "OK Google" and issuing a command, rather than having to type a phrase into a search engine or check emails to dig out flight details.