Since 2008, Google has been hosting a conference in San Francisco called “I/O” which stands for both “Innovation in the Open” and “Input/Output”. This year’s 2-day conference was rather eventful for application and web developers. Google has become a very large company that spans a wide variety of interests, and it’s because of this that they really packed a large number of announcements and updates into the time they had. Some were fairly large while many were somewhat small so I’ll just run through the highlights.

Google TV

The main concept that Google was stressing was that they are now available on desktop computers and portable devices while the one screen that almost everyone has been completely left out of the mix. They noticed that there’s numerous occasions where people share videos and other things on the Internet with others, and they wondered how great it would be if the content that’s being shared was readily available on your TV.

Simply put, Google TV is a platform for bringing the Internet to your TV. This idea isn’t new, but Google is looking at products that attempted this in the past so that they can learn from their mistakes while providing something new. It also helps that TVs have been greatly improved in terms of size, resolution, and overall quality. Developers will be able to build different plugins & applications for it, and this means that it can be greatly improved and expanded over time. Hardware manufacturers will be able to provide consumers a choice on how they want it integrated into their new or existing setup. Logitech is working on a device that you plug into your TV where you can also plug your existing devices into that box so that you can control them via the Google TV enabled device. Sony is also working with Google TV, but they are building it right into their TVs with no external device required. The scheduled release date is set for sometime this fall.

Android

The keynote on day two was almost entirely dedicated to showing improvements made to Google’s Mobile Operating System, Android. It quickly became apparent that they are in a serious competition with Apple’s iPhone. What’s important is that the ideas they have for how the user interacts with the phone is different from Apple’s view, and they’re executing on them pretty well. For example, their multi-tasking feature allows the full program to simply run in the background while you’re free to do something else, but the iPhone’s multi-tasking will give the developer a few options of which kind of multi-tasking they want to offer so that they only run those specific tasks in the background rather than the full application (there’s pros and cons for both of these methods). You might see that Android is version 2.2 and the iPhone is version 4, but don’t let that fool you. The features that were added when updating from 2.1 to 2.2 can be pretty substantial for some people.

Here’s a few improvements in Android 2.2:

• Up to 4.5x faster than 2.1 (without needing to buy a new device)
• Automatic application updating
• Flash-enabled web browser (something that’s doubtful to ever come to the iPhone)
• Tethering / WiFi-hotspot (so your computer and other devices can use the Internet connection that the phone has by connecting to it wirelessly)

They’re also making good use of the Internet connectivity. The phone/android device is tied to your Google account (much like how an iPhone & iPad needs to be tied to an iTunes account), but what makes this different than simply allowing music & app purchases is that it allows for information to be pushed out to the devices using that account. The example they gave was that you could be viewing the app marketplace from any web browser while logged into your account, and you could purchase/get an app from the website. The iTunes model would download it to that computer (if it’s one of the 5 activated computers that you’re allowed to setup) and you would then have to plug the iPhone in and sync the whole thing. Android devices are different in that you would be able to “push” that application out to any device you choose so it starts downloading onto the phone in a matter of seconds (no plugging in and no syncing required). This is just one example of their cloud integration, and they did show a few other really clever uses for that feature. Android is maturing into a full-blown iPhone competitor rather quickly, and they’re differentiating it in various ways so that they’re not simply trying to imitate/copy Apple so that it the choice comes down to what you will use it for and how you want to use it.

WebM (Open Web Media Project)

Streaming media sites have become a primary destination for people online over the last few years. As the owner of YouTube, Google can’t help but take notice of this. They also aren’t satisfied with the quality of the experience you currently get while viewing videos or listening to audio over the Internet. Google acquired a video compression technology company, On2, for $106 million in August of last year. The WebM project is the first result we’ve seen of that acquisition as the primary product that On2 made is now open source for everyone to use and help improve. Web browsers are including native support for media playback so that it’s takes less time to start playing, plays smoothly, doesn’t excessively drain battery life, and more. Most video technologies are patent encumbered and that could really be a big problem later on if the patent-holders decide to charge royalties for each video that uses their compression technology. The WebM project will prevent anything like that from happening while providing a generally compromise-free option.