News of the new Nexus 7 leaked early, so the highlight of today’s breakfast with Sundar Pichai was a product that truly surprised us: Chromecast, a tiny, $35 dongle that streams audio and video to your TV from phones, tablets and laptops. But that wasn’t all: the new Nexus 7 emerged as expected, with a slimmer form factor and significantly improved screen. So did Android 4.3, an incremental update to Jelly Bean that improves graphics performance and communication between devices. We learned that more than 50 billion apps have now been downloaded from Google Play — 2 billion of them since Google I/O in May — and that more than 1 million apps are now available in the store. Google’s first announcement Wednesday was the slim new Nexus 7, which Google bills as the world’s highest-resolution 7-inch tablet.
