SAN FRANCISCO — Hoping to up its game against rivals such as Apple, Google on Thursday announced a suite of new products and mobile features at its annual software developer conference, including a new smartphone payment system that can be used to buy products in more than 700,000 stores and restaurants from Macy’s to McDonald’s.
More than 5,500 software developers, analysts and others gathered for the keynote talk of a two-day conference that the search giant typically uses to build excitement among independent app developers about its open-source smartphone operating system.
Google also introduces new products at the event, and Android Pay was the most prominent new feature to debut Thursday. Google has worked with big credit card providers and three of the big four U.S. wireless phone carriers to develop the system, formerly called Google Wallet, said Dave Burke, Android’s vice president of engineering.
While Google has had difficulty spurring adoption of Google Wallet, Apple has managed to push retailers into offering mobile-payments options with its Apple Pay, included on the most recent iPhone.
“Google has traditionally struggled in the area of mobile payments,” said Bryan Yeager, an analyst with eMarketer.
