Google wants your data to do great things. That's not such a bad deal.

As I watched Google's many unveilings this week, I could sense a certain confidence in the proceedings. That was no doubt partly because the company was, for the first time in 10 years, hosting its Google I/O developer conference at its headquarters in Mountain View instead of San Francisco, so the executives and project managers were literally playing in their own backyard. But I think there was something else at play. Looking back at the opening keynote, CEO Sundar Pichai decided to kick things off with two interesting -- and related -- products: the so-called "assistant" that seeks to proactively offer help as you navigate Google's many services, and Home, an Amazon Echo-like speaker that infuses the assistant in your house as a kind of ambient presence, ready to help the moment you utter the activation phrase ("OK, Google," of course). SEE ALSO: Google just revealed its strategy to rule the post-search world.