Google's vision for VR: YouTube, smartphones and a 'virtual hand'

Google will offer the popular videos for VR and will sell a plastic headset in which consumers will insert a phone along with a controller that serves as a hand

If Google gets its way, you will explore the world with your phone strapped over your eyes.

At its annual developer conference in Silicon Valley, the internet company showed how it plans to get more people using virtual reality in the coming year by baking the technology into newer smartphones. The vision is for the world's billions of people to ditch the physical world and explore far off places, take in the news, meet a friend or, as Google repeatedly demonstrated Thursday, water a virtual garden.