Much hay has been made regarding the ever narrowing collision between Apple and Google. Every year they have their large conferences and this year Google has chosen to move up their blitzkrieg to beat Apple out of the gate by a month. Today is Google I/O and soon we will see what the braintrust in Mountain View has been up to. Ready your browsers, the three hour keynote starts at 9am Pacific.
What can we expect from the show today? Andy Rubin has recently moved from being head of Android to Google's mysterious X program. (Fun fact: Android was Rubin's nickname at Apple because he loved robots so much). Sundar Pichai from the Chrome OS team has taken his place but don't read into that too much. Google's nacent Chrome OS-in-a-browser has seen little traction and only iterative improvements in the last coule of years since its release. This is like just a reorganization under one manager. What does this mean for Android? Well Sundar recently stated that Android 5.0 (AKA Key Lime Pie) is still in development and at best we will see a 4.3 update today with tweaks. Also deflating expectations, Sundar has said that this will be a more developer focused event than in the past and we are likely not going to see anything rivaling last years skydive-apalooza. Look for updates on Google Glass, Chrome OS, and the Google Play store to be short and sweet.
Google Maps. Rumor is that Google Maps will undergo an overhaul in functionality but more obviously in the look. Google has been pairing up its design language to match their Google+ social network and Google Maps will be the latest to join the party. All of Google's services are lining up to move users into trying out Google+ and learning the advantages that it has over Facebook. Google is hoping that their massive Maps user base will shift the needle even further for the number 2 social network.
Hardware? In years past, visitors to the event have been showered with more and more new hardware and a sort of reward for being there to witness the newest Google has to offer. Expectations this year have been lowered somewhat by Google themselves but don't be surprised to see an update to the long-in-the-tooth Nexus 7 or even the low selling Nexus 10. Sales of the LG Nexus 4 have been brisk so don't expect to see a phone update until the fall.
Babel. The dark horse here is the Babel Project. Messaging has long been a thorn in Google's side as they have supported up to seven different messaging platforms simultaneously. This myriad of messaging systems (Chat, Talk, Hangouts) has added unnecessary confusion for users and has thus far failed to present a competitor to Apple's iMessage, something Android users have been asking for since Apple released it. Babel (a codename most likely) would bring all of these disparate systems together so users of Google's various platforms could intermingle and send information across a truly cross-platform messaging client.
What else? Wel the keynote is three hours long so obviously Google is shooting for everything including the kitchen sink. Will quantity impress over a streamlined short and sweet presentation? The show starts in a few minutes so tune in and find out.
https://developers.google.com/events/io/
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