Google I/O History

Ok, I maybe late with this topic. But it is better late than never.

Google I/O is a two-day developer-centered global conference held by the tech giant Google in San Francisco, California. Google I/O features highly technical, in-depth sessions focused on building web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open web technologies such as Android,Chrome, Chrome OS, Google APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine and more.The “I” and “O” stand for “Innovation in the Open”, and input/output.

Lets just go back through time to 2008 when Google I/O took birth. It was completely different technical world then. This was the year when Google showed clear intents of dominating the tech world with entering into many new fields and showed that they are much more than search engine giants.These were highlights of Google I/O 2008:

• AOL and Google announced that AOL was adding support for OpenSocial. Google had the right inception the web will be more social in the near future.
• Google Web Toolkit version 1.5 release candidate was released. It contains a ton of new features including Java 1.5 language support and increased performance. Simply recompiling existing applications will result in a 20-200% performance boost.
• Google App Engine is now open for anyone to sign up and use immediately. This was another big thing that Google put their money on and won. This was the Google’s grand entry into cloud computing market. But the free version had some restrictions,so by Google announced App Engine’s PRO version which eliminated the limitations of the free version.
• MySpace demonstrated a new version which uses Google Gears to provide local storage, sorting, and searching of messages from your MySpace contacts. Ok I agree Myspace might have failed, but Google’s idea didn’t.
• Google released the Google maps API. This enabled developers to integrate Google maps in websites. Initially it was  only a JavaScript API, the Maps API has since expanded to include an API for Adobe Flash applications.

Google I/O 2009 was a very special and an important one for the tech world. Let us see the highlights:

• Android. Even though Google had acquired Android Inc. way back in 2005, android was not much in news because of absence not so “smart” phones and “smart” people. But iPhone started gaining momentum and people became “smart”.  HTC Dream  with T-Mobile USA  became the first Android phone. And rest is history.
• Next (or equally) big thing thing was Chrome browser. Google highly publicized  their Chrome browser (under their Chromium project) and boasted the HTML5, which has had major contributions from the Google development team.
•  App Engine saw some developments with introduction of  JAVA.
• Cloud computing had gained some momentum. And Google was not going to watch it idly, so Google introduced Google Wave. Google Wave is a web-based computing platform and communications protocol, designed to merge key features of media like e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. At first it was released only to the developers and later that year 100,000 users were added on invitation only basis (I was lucky to get invitation).
• Google AJAX APIs were released.

Google I/O 2010 In 2010 , Google wasn’t just another IT company. They had now evolved into a the largest valued company. Google made their presence felt in almost all the emerging fields. These were the highlights of 2010:

• Android had gained momentum and had 10% of market share in  the smartphone area.  Markets trends had changed and people started to opt Android because of the various options available to buy. Smartphones were smarter now. Thanks to the thousands app developers, phones weren’t phones now. Google released the highly anticipated Android Market.
• Again App Engines saw some more development.
• Chrome browser gave Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a run for their money. Chrome had gained a noticeable market share. Chrome now had 6 week update cycles which made it one one of the highly developed browsers.
• Google also showed clear intents of developing a web-centered Google Chrome OS.
• Google TV was announced much to the delight of Google lovers. Web wasn’t just restricted to Computers and mobile phone now. Google partnered with Intel, Sony and Logitech and integrated Android operating system and the Linux version of Google Chrome browser to create an interactive television overlay on top of existing internet television and WebTV sites.
• Google Wave hadn’t grown as expected. But oogle released API to the developers. But later that year Google washed its hands off this project and handed it to Apache.
• Enterprise, Geo, Google APIs, Google Web Toolkit, Social Web also saw developments.

Next post will be a detailed analysis of Google I/O 2011.

Here are videos to check out.

Google TV(MUST WATCH)

What is Google Chrome OS (MUST WATCH)

Google Wave overview

Google I/O 2008 watch the videos here

Google I/O 2009 click here

Google I/O 2010:

Keynote day1

Keynote Day2

Source:Wikipedia and the “OPEN WEB”.