Excerpt:
"Today, NASA's Kepler team has announced that it's developed a new technique to verify the existence of many of the planetary candidates in its back catalog. The technique, which relies on the presence of multiple planets in the system, has led to the single largest announcement of new planets in history: 715 of them, orbiting a total of 305 stars."
Yes there are billions of planets out there, my own guess is that the existence of other intelligent beings is likely but they are reluctant to launch interstellar voyages because the consequences of encountering a more advanced species are unforseeable.
  