Did Google I/O show us how far the company is falling behind Apple?

There were plenty of exciting announcements regarding virtual reality at Google I/O 2015 earlier this week, but as far as mobile announcements went, did anybody else notice how familiar everything sounded? What I mean by familiar is that many of the announcements that Google made for Android M were for features and services that Apple has had in iOS for some time, even years in some cases. 

From all the breathless coverage detailing Google’s I/O 2015 conference announcements, you might not have noticed that virtually all of what Google had to show this year were things Apple had already introduced over the past year (or long ago). Once hailed as being “more innovative” and faster at introducing new features, Android has become a slow follower. Google started out touting HBO Now for Android, after Apple debuted the new service as exclusive to iOS in early April. From there, the company detailed the next Android “M,” which plans to throw away all the confusing, flaw-riddled app permissions of Android and go with the exact same user request system introduced years ago by Apple’s iOS, where apps that want to use the camera or access contacts simply ask to do so first. Android’s unintuitive copy and paste will also eventually be replaced with a new system that takes its design cues from iOS 3.0 (from 2009), as noted by John Gruber.