Google enables Android devices to interact with Chrome; to take on Apple's Contimuity

Google this week unveiled its own system to take on Apple's ''Continuity'' technology, that allows Android-powered smartphones to interact with Chrome OS, the browser-based operating system that powers inexpensive Chromebook laptops, Computer World reported.

Sundar Pichai, who heads Android and Chrome development demonstrated the system that would allow mobile devices to connect to laptops in Google's world at the company's annual developers conference that kicked off Wednesday.

"Users almost always have a phone with them," Pichai said. "Every time you approach your Chromebook and your phone is with you, we will automatically unlock your Chromebook and sign you into your favorite apps and services." The phone would need to be unlocked for this to work.

Pichai also demonstrated how a Chromebook could display incoming call notifications, text messages and smartphone low-battery warnings when the user's Android phone was nearby, based on Google Now, which Google first incorporated in the preview versions of Chrome OS earlier this year.

Apple had unveiled phone lap top links on 2 June on the opening day of its Worldwide Developers Conference -- though these formed only a subset of the new offerings that Apple announced that day.

Meanwhile, Google has made it clear that it would not be killing off its Nexus line of smartphones and tablets and replacing them with a new program called "Android Silver."

"People just get excited by concepts and forget why we do things," Google executive Dave Burke told ReadWrite. "We are still invested in Nexus."

Declining to elaborate on the Silver program with ReadWrite, he said comments that the Nexus line could be ending "is the totally wrong conclusion to make."

According to reports Google planned to dump the Nexus brand, including the Nexus 5 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet -- for either the Silver program or Google Play Edition products. Google would however, be still releasing a Nexus 8 tablet, though speculation was rife that it would be one of the last new Nexus devices.

The reports had it that The Android Silver project would involve manufacturers and wireless carriers being paid to make and sell premium devices that closely adhered to Google's specifications.

Silver devices from manufacturers such as LG and Lenovo are expected to reach the markets as early as next year, which  could help Google better compete against Apple by giving the internet company greater control over creating high-end devices.