I've quickly grown accustomed to having instantaneous access to the entirety of human knowledge pretty much anywhere and at any time (otherwise known as googling from a smartphone). But you know what feature of the magical unfolding digital future really blows me away? The fact that, in my house, I can say "Alexa, play Led Zeppelin," and start irritating my children within seconds. Alexa is the pleasant personality baked into Amazon's Echo Bluetooth speaker; she's staring at me right now from the kitchen table, breathlessly listening for her name. Google just announced a similar product called Home, and Apple's Siri can pull this off, as well.

Daydream, meanwhile, is the company's true VR ambitions revealed. Cardboard was how it got its feet wet; Daydream is how it'll really make an impact. By leveraging the combined forces of Google's hardware partners, the flexibility and power of Android and the company's army of developers, Google could be looking to mimic the strategy that made Android so successful in the first place. The news that Google is rethinking messaging apps yet again was met with less enthusiasm, but the most important part of the Allo isn't smart replies -- it's the integration with the Google Assistant. That's how Google is referring to the bot that lives inside the app, letting you ask questions with natural language.

Google held its I/O Developer Conference this week, and much of the focus was on machine learning and related technologies. One of the new products the Internet giant showed off was a new custom chip that runs artificial technology, but as always, there was lots to see. UBS analyst Eric Sheridan said one of the most important announcements was Google Assistant, which is a new digital personal assistant that appears to be much more advanced than Google Now. Interactions with Assistant will take on a more human-like nature as it will offer two-way conversational dialogue using the company's natural language processing technologies. Jefferies analysts said the company is far ahead of others in speech recognition and contextual conversation.

This week Google held its I/O developer conference and presented its self-learning Artificial Intelligence engine, the Google Assistant. Google is following Amazon's example by releasing a smart speaker that will monitor the sound environment in order to receive messages from the user and help them quickly finishing tasks. Google Home is a bit like Amazons Echo. Since it is connected to the Google Assistant, it will learn your preferences and will make suggestions based on them. In the simultaneously released messaging App Allo, the Google Assistant will monitor your way of answering to questions and will learn in which situations you give which answers to suggest you the answer you could give before you start typing.

Google is announcing a new messaging app today. It's called Allo and its main feature is a Google assistant that's built right in. Google says it'll be available later this summer -- for free -- on both iOS and Android. Allo (pronounced like "Aloe" and not like "'allo, guv'nor!") is a mobile-only app that you might think is meant to replace Google's other messaging app, Hangouts. Allo is explicitly meant to be a fresh start for Google's new communication's division (which also runs Hangouts and Project Fi). "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay, director of engineering, communications products.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI can also be used to analyze the data produced by IoT, social media, mobile phones and other sources to provide active learning analytics that can create a virtuous circle. Not too long ago, A.I. seemed a distant dream for many. Today, it is all around us. We carry A.I. in our pockets, in our cars, and in many of the web services we use throughout the day.

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 speed of technological change is exponential, and what was yesterday's hot ticket quickly becomes tomorrow's old news. We are living in the midst of a huge surge of interest and research in Artificial Intelligence ( A.I.). It seems like every week there is a new breakthrough in the field and a new record is set in some task previously done by humans. If you don't already know what IoT, AI, VR, AR and the'bots' mean, you better get up to speed immediately; for these technologies are changing the way data is created, collected, interpreted and communicated. In the digital age -- 'data is money'.

The name of the game in data-driven marketing is specialized datasets. Be they Spotify's look into artist and music preferences of its users; Facebook's deep understanding of its users' behaviors across its entire social graph, platform and app ecosystem; or even Google's stranglehold on data around search, browsing, email, and beyond -- the more granular the insights they can provide on users, the more useful and appealing for marketers looking to better tailor their tactics to target audiences. In The Weather Company's case, the value is in marketers wanting to create personalized messaging. One way to do so is to send marketing communications based around the weather happening to the recipient as it is happening. For example, if a retailer knows a major snow storm is in the forecast, it can send a promotional message with a discount for snow-related products only to people who fall under the forecast area.

The Burning Man vibe was intentional. For Google I/O this year -- its annual developer conference, typically held in San Francisco's antiseptic Moscone convention center -- the company stayed in Mountain View, camping out at Shoreline Amphitheatre, a grassy concert hall just a short bike ride away from its headquarters. The keynote kicked off with a wink to the libertine festival. From control booths in the back of the theater, a woman in a leather vest and a man in a collarless blazer strummed a supersized string instrument made from cords that hung in the air high above the audience -- an Earth Harp that previously made an appearance in Black Rock City. Google parked a massive "art car" shaped like a ship and festooned with Burning Man bumper stickers in the middle of its sandbox playground for new software and hardware.