Thousands of people gathered near Google's headquarters on Wednesday to hear the company's vision for the future. In past years, Google has used its developers conference to unveil all sorts of shiny new toys and services. Not all of them have been smash hits. Google Glass had its big coming out party at IO back in 2012, after all. Google TV was the star of 2010. And remember the Nexus Q, the orb-shaped music player that never even reached the market?

Google announced a bunch of new products today at the I/O 2016 conference in Mountain View, California. Some, like Google Home and Android N, were expected while others, such as the VR standard Daydream, weren't. Here's the best of what they announced: The search company announced an always-listening virtual assistant for the home at today's Google I/O 2016. Similar to Amazon's Echo, Google Home will allow users to discover movie times, answer a question, or carry out a task using a vocal command from anywhere in the room. In addition, Google Home can control your TV, presumably if it has a Chromecast attached.

Google is catching up to competitors Facebook, Apple and Amazon in messaging, video calling and home speaker-embedded digital assistants. But it's taking the lead in virtual reality and may have changed mobile phones forever with a new twist on mobile apps that allows them to play without being installed. That's the conclusion of Jan Dawson, an analyst with Jackdaw Research, who was at the Google I/O annual developers conference Wednesday in Mountain View, California. Dawson said Google's new Allo app focuses on the search giant's strengths in search and natural language recognition, but may have come too late behind bigger rivals to gain much use. In a research note he praised Google's new Daydream virtual reality platform, but noted it'll take time to become popular because the high bar for specifications means no devices can support it yet.

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 message from Google's developers' conference is clear: The company is prepared to take on competitors as well as regulators. CEO Sundar Pichai and his team were flexing. We can do chatbots better than Facebook. We can be smarter at home than Amazon Echo. Our personal assistant gets trained on Google search, which is more widely used than Microsoft's Bing.

Google has unveiled a new messaging app it hopes will be able to topple Facebook's Messenger. It will include the search giant's new AI assistant, helping people with everything from booking cinema tickets to playing games. Allo will also feature end-to-end encryption, and use AI to predict what a user will want to say - even being able to understand pictures and suggest responses. Google has unveiled a new messaging app it hopes will be able to take on Facebook's Messenger and Snapchat with new AI features. It can even analyse pictures and suggest a response.

This morning, Google laid out its ambitious vision for the future, and a series of spectacular Google products that will take us there. At its I/O developer conference, the company unveiled a series of new products centered around the company's core competency: Unrivaled search and machine intelligence systems. Unlike earlier years, Google's big reveals were previews -- products launching "later this year" -- not immediate launches. And the most significant announcements -- personal assistant tech and smart messaging apps -- are products that Google rivals Amazon, Apple and Facebook already have out in the market. It's a sign that Google feels confident it can ship these products that are packed, in theory, with impressive, cutting-edge AI. "We want to talk to you a little bit about the future," CEO Sundar Pichai said at the onset of the keynote.

From virtual reality to a new smart-home speaker, Google is showing off just how pervasive it has become even as it's squeezed by its biggest competitors--Facebook, Apple and Amazon. Google showed off a VR system called Daydream, along with plans for headsets that will compete with Facebook's Oculus Rift. In a jab at Amazon, the company announced Google Home, an Internet-connected speaker that listens for your voice commands to play music or control lights and thermostats in the home. It is reminiscent of Amazon's Echo and will be available later this year for a yet-unannounced price. 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 apps.

Google unveiled a ton of cool new products and features today at Google I/O, many of them powered by some seriously impressive artificial intelligence going by the name of Google Assistant. Or is it a Google assistant? Which kinda just seems like Google Now? And while we're asking questions … Hold on. Let's take a step back and go over what exactly the Google assistant is, what it does and how it's going to change the way you use Google.

Google I/O was full of announcements about upcoming products and enhancements. We're in a seminal moment, said Google chief executive (CEO) Sundar Pichai kicking off the company's annual I/O Conference in San Francisco. Looking back at the past 17(?!) years, Pichai discussed Google's evolution to the live audience of 7,000. As technology gets more sophisticated, he sees artificial intelligence (AI) playing a huge role in the company's next 17 years. "Leveraging our state-of-the-art capabilities in machine learning and AI, we truly want to take the next step in being more assistive to our user. Today, we are announcing the Google Assistant," said Pichai, one of the only people in the world who's allowed to use the "L" word on Search Engine Watch.