Google hosts an annual event called “Google I/O” where they talk about how the company is doing, where they’re going, and even launch a product or two. The first I/O event took place in 2008 and we’re not sure how many people attended. The second event in 2009 had the search engine company selling out of tickets in just 90 days. The third event took just 10 days to sell out. For 2011 it took just 59 minutes! Let me remind you: these tickets go for around $450, so that just goes to show you how much traction Android is getting and how eager developers are to learn about what Google is going to do for them to help make developing and selling applications a viable means of income. The event itself will take place between May 10th and 11th in San Francisco and while we don’t know what the exact agenda is, historically Google has opted to live stream the I/O keynote on their YouTube page for everyone to see.
What are we looking forward to? Well, there’s rumors that Android 2.4 is going to come out in April, which would be a month before the event. We’re looking forward to hearing from Google what their strategy with Android is going forward and if they’re going to keep the tablet version and smartphone version of their mobile operating system separate or if they’re going to merge them at some point in the future. We also want to hear what Google is going to do in terms of building a music store. They’re supposedly going to build a Spotify/MOG/Rdio clone, something that the market desperately needs since managing MP3 files in 2011 seems archaic. We’re also looking forward to hearing more about Chrome OS and see how that’s developing. Why is Google building a new operating system, from the ground up, just for netbooks? Then there’s Google TV … yea, let’s not talk about that failure.