Google I/O – keynote highlights
Monday, May 16th, 2011 Peter Liaw, Principal Engineer
Last week, I was at Google I/O and here’s a wrap-up:
Where’s the hype?
When I approached Moscone Center on Tuesday around 8am, I was wondering where everyone was. When I attended Apple WWDC last year, there were thousands of people in a line that wrapped around the entire city block, waiting to get into the conference. As it turned out, it was just a PR stunt by Apple, who didn’t let attendees enter the building until just before the keynote speech. This led to media circus outside Moscone Center, with news coverage, performers, reporters, hawkers, evangelists loitering outside the event.
In contrast, Google I/O attendees were allowed to enter Moscone starting at 7am to register and eat breakfast prior to the 9am keynote. Much less hype and fanfare than Apple.
Keynote Highlights
- Less hype, but Google’s engineering VP didn’t pass up the chance to take a swipe at Apple. Android is now activating 400,000 devices per day, easily surpassing iOS device activations..
- Android 3.1 was announced and launched. Mainly bug fixes over 3.0, plus some minor features such as USB host support and resizable widgets.
- Ice Cream Sandwich to be released Q4. It will bring Honeycomb features to the phone and consolidate the development platform for phones and tablets.
- Android @ Home in conjunction with Android Open Accessory showed the future of home automation and remote control, accessories and more. This really opens up hardware integration for 3rd party products.
- Google Music beta launched. Think Amazon Digital Music Locker. Google doesn’t have any music labeled signed up, so you can’t buy music directly from Google, but they’ll give you plenty of cloud storage to stream it.
- Google is now also renting/streaming movies. Taking on Netflix?
- <Honeycomb is coming to Google TV. I don’t see the point, or know anyone who cares. Using your TV for Internet just doesn’t work for me (too low res). And your roommate or spouse probably wouldn’t interested in watching you browse the Internet on the TV.
- <Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1s Android tablets were given to attendees. This thing is nice (stop by to check it out). Thin as iPad 2, and lighter. Makes Motorola Xoom look and feel soooo dated. I think we finally have an iPad contender. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of days, and it is really sweet. [Ed. Note: I like it too!]
- Chrome OS is now Chromebook, to be released June 15th. The return of the dumb terminals as a browser!! Google is targeting enterprises and education markets for $28 and $20 per device per month. I think this can work.
More in my next post on Chromebooks, Sony Experia Play, that crazy dancing robot and Angry Birds.
