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 unleashed its 2016 developers conference on Mountain View, CA this morning. The company debuted a bunch of new products including its answer to Amazon's Alexa, dubbed Google Home; a new VR headset called Daydream (along with a new VR section for Play) and two new messaging apps, Allo and Duo. Google also showed off some of the new features we can expect in the upcoming Android N operating system, a full-blown overhaul of the Android Wear ecosystem, updates to Android Auto and some new tricks for Google Pay.

We decided to ask our married couples about the content of the first message their partner sent them online, and the answers were pretty surprising. In fact, 35% of married women actually contacted their current partner first, serving as inspiration for women who are still on the fence when it comes to making the first move.

Google is fighting harder than ever to get into your household. On Wednesday the company announced its entry into the voice-activated virtual assistant race with Google Home, its answer to the Amazon Echo. Google Home promises to live alongside you wherever you reside, answering your questions, playing your music and reading your news, much like its popular rival. It'll also have Google search built in, which means it'll know a lot about you as soon as you sign in. "We want users to have an ongoing two-way dialogue with Google," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the company's I/O developer conference on Wednesday. To be sure, the company already knows where you are, where you live and what you had for dinner this week (assuming you find your recipes through the search engine).

Google today introduced its own personal digital assistant called, aptly, the Google Assistant. It's based on existing technology, including Google Now. The assistant will power Google's upcoming Amazon Echo competitor, Google Home. Speaking at the beginning of the keynote at the Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai described the technology as "a conversational assistant" that can carry on "an ongoing two-way dialogue." "We want to be there for our users asking them, 'How can I help?'"

While Apple (AAPL) has Siri, its AI-based digital assistant for iPhones, it has yet to introduce a home hub device. Amazon, though, has sold an estimated 3 million Echo home hubs. "Credit to the team at Amazon for creating a lot of excitement in this space," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in his I/O keynote speech Wednesday. Google Home, designed for music streaming and other entertainment, features built-in search capabilities. The "virtual agent" answers simple questions and carries out basic tasks.

The Alphabet Inc. division unveiled a new mobile messaging application Wednesday called Allo containing a digital personal assistant, based on AI technology that powers other Google services like Inbox. At its I/O developer conference near its Silicon Valley headquarters, the company also showed off a voice-based search device called Google Home that uses the same assistant technology to answer questions when people are in their houses, a potentially potent rival to Amazon.com Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the goal is to develop an "on-going two-way dialog with Google" and build billions of people their own "individual Google." The CEO sees the Google digital assistant as an "ambient experience that extends across devices." Google became one of the world's most valuable companies by making a search engine that sucks in billions of queries people type into web browsers on PCs and phones.

LAS VEGAS--Cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are the keys to delivering richer, more sophisticated shopping experiences, eBay Chief Product Officer RJ Pittman said during a presentation Tuesday here at the Shoptalk 2016 retail conference. "I've yet to see great, personalized shopping experiences at scale," Pittman said. "We think there's huge opportunities to move forward through AI, machine learning and predictive modeling." Pittman cited the potential commerce benefits to be gained from AI technologies like natural language understanding, which enables software systems to understand human speech as it is spoken. For example, by processing the information in a shopper statement like "Going with my wife on a camping trip in Tahoe next month, need a tent," eBay would automatically suggest a tent large enough for two people that's also appropriate for Tahoe's altitude and average temperatures in June.

Despite spinning off an Alphabet-soup of divisions, the Google mothership remains a sprawling company, so it's unsurprising that its annual developer's conference covers a continent of territory. In a two-hour-long keynote, the company took the audience on a tour of its upcoming tools and technologies. Here's a quick trip through what you missed. And don't forget to check out our in-depth analysis: A glimpse inside Google's VR Daydream, One Android to rule them all? A global on-line paper-airplane game and, to quote one our live-bloggers, "video of lots of happy people doing weird things" leading up to the event set the tone, and as usual began with a recap of how Google's evolved and how well it's doing.

Google has officially planted a stake in the land of voice activated, smart home virtual assistants. The tech giant on Tuesday introduced the highly anticipated Google Home device, a rival to Amazon's two-year-old smart-home hub Echo, during its Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View. But don't get too excited just yet -- the device won't launch until later this year at an undisclosed price. Formerly codenamed Chirp, Google Home serves as a voice-activated virtual agent capable of connecting to devices around the home (such as the Nest thermostat) and completing basic tasks like playing music or searching Google. The Google Home is essentially a small speaker, cylindrical in shape, equipped with always-on, far-field microphones that can pick up human voice from across the room.