Google’s I/O developer conference has been heavily mobile-centric in recent years, but this year the buzz was in other areas. The latest Android release, N, has been widely previewed already, while the most interesting of the search giant’s mobile initiatives, Project Ara, has seen its ambitions scaled back (see separate item). Instead, the I/O highlights reflected the transition that Google and others are making, away from specifically mobile platforms, to a new generation of web services and user experiences, which span multiple devices and screens, and are driven by virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Diversification – under a unified Google-centric interface – was the theme, even if, in many areas of development such as VR, the smartphone remains the starting…