I/O started well, but went downhill fast. Photo: Google

I had been looking forward to the Google I/O keynote for weeks before it kicked off Thursday. I was rubbing my hands together like a little kid on Christmas morning when Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president, took to the stage to reveal what the company had up its sleeve.

But when the event ended two and a half hours later, I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Santa had visited — but instead of bringing what was on my list, he’d left me with a bunch of cheap gifts I knew I’d be bored with by the time the turkey was cooked.

Google has some exciting things up its sleeve. Photo: Google

Google is getting ready to unveil a new online picture sharing and storage service at the company’s upcoming Google I/O software developers conference later this month.

Not linked with Google+, the tool will supposedly allow users to post pictures to Facebook and Twitter in a more straightforward way than is currently possible through Google. It will also represent another stab on Google’s part at the photo-sharing market currently dominated by Instagram, Snapchat and Flickr.

Google finally gave the AOSP camera app the makeover it deserved last month, renaming it Google Camera. In the process, though, the company removed a lot of features including a countdown timer and the ability to take time-lapse videos.

Today, Google is rolling out a minor update for the app that brings back a feature that never should have been removed in the first place — the ability to click pictures while recording a video. 

Google has made it super simple to share the photos you’ve backed up to Google+ directly from Gmail on the web. When composing a new email message, users can click the insert photos button to directly insert “Auto Backup” images with just a few clicks.

Google rolled out Android 4.4.1 for the Nexus 5 and other Nexus-branded devices on Thursday evening. Its main changes include some much-needed camera fixes for the company’s latest smartphone, but the update brings other fixes and improvements that you may not have spotted yet.

So we’ve put them all together in a handy change log for you. Here’s everything you can expect from Android 4.4.1 on the Nexus 5.