People at the heart of Ice Cream Sandwich: Google

Google's CEO has used his company's own social networking tool to spruik its latest handset and spoke on how the new Android operating system plays into his vision for the future of the search giant.

Google revealed details about its latest update to the Android smartphone operating system, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, focusing on a new address book in the system that heavily incorporates Google+ features and sharing functionality.

Following the launch, Larry Page posted to Google+ that "people are at the heart of Ice Cream Sandwich", and that the Android team had focused on re-inventing the contact manager to improve information sharing.

"...one way to think about Google+ is that over the last quarter we shipped the +, and now we're going to ship the Google part."

A week ago, during Google's annual earnings call, Page announced that the social networking service had registered 40 million members, who had publish 3.4 billion photographs in the four months since the service went live.

"Our ultimate ambition is to transform the overall Google experience ... because we understand what you want and can deliver it instantly," Page wrote.

"This means baking identity and sharing into all of our products so that we build a real relationship with our users. Sharing on the web will be like sharing in real life across all your stuff. You'll have better, more relevant search results and ads."

Users of the Google search engine saw some of these changes come into play in the last few weeks, with a redesigned, consistent navigation panel appearing above all Google pages, with a shortcut to Google+.