Google I/O 2008

Overview
This is probably first of its kind for Google, changing from a consumer driven search platform to emerging as a development platform. The conference was held in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The conference was reasonably priced at $400. You pay only $55 if you are a student/teacher. Darn! I knew I should have stayed back in school!

Who was there?
The audience was mainly the young (20 and 30 something) developers. I did not find a single business suit. The crowd was eager, enthusiastic and participant. Code Labs remained wall to wall full.

What was shown?
Google showed these key tracks:
- Social
- App Engine & Apps
- AJAX & APIs
- Android
- Geo

What I saw?
I went there to learn more about OpenSocial and Social Networking widgets. (We are doing a lot of work on social media marketing. Sorry could not resist the self promotion). I found that Google’s OpenSocial is not only in but it is THE THING! Stalwarts like MySpace, Orkut, AOL, Hi5 and even Yahoo (I guess if you cannot beat them, might as well joinem) bragged about OpenSocial widgets. I also discovered a totally cool Open Social Container called Shindig with Java and PHP implementations. What this means to you? Well now you can build your own widgets and run it in NOT ONE but TWENTY TOP networks. If that is not enough for you, check this out. You can test it first on Shindig and then unveil it when it passes Shindig, chances are high that it will run on most. Sounds cool, right?

As I was walking impressed with this I found Google showcasing AppEngine. This is a framework to build apps on the cloud. So not only you can build apps on Google, you can Host it with them. It is amazingly simple! On top of this, I found a whole offering of app development, supported by a rich set of apis to access photos, videos, calendar, contacts and “you name it they have it” kinda spectrum. Google Gears, APIS and Gadgets.

Google has also come up with a partnership program for small business providers Small developers can build, host, train, promote their services and even market their solutions in a solutions marketplace. Now, there will be an army of VARs and ISVs walking the streets.

My Take away:
Google is now turning their attention to the $60B application development marketplace. They are doing it in a BIG way and they are doing it with a LONG look. They are trying to proliferate from the center to the LONG TAIL of the opportunity. Just like they did it for Search and AD Marketing. From conference setting, to target audience (young and next gen) all the way to dev tools (mostly just notepad and command line) they are stirring a revolution in SIMPLICITY.

Can you imagine, large sections of human population (even our moms) building a web app, crawling YouTube videos playing on a chrome-less player, distributing it on TOP 20 social nets to reach out to 500 M people, all hosted and served up from some Google cloud?