Google’s Developer conference has wrapped up yesterday. We have been busy attending the sessions, chatting with people and playing with our new phone.

Here are the conference highlights:

  • 4000+ attendees attended the event at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
  • Google’s big message at the conference is that web is the new platform (we have heard that before), and that they are backing HTML5.
  • Google announced Google WebElements – allows site owners to easily add calendar, conversations, search, maps, news and presentations easily onto their site.
  • Android Developer Challenge II is announced.
  • Google announced Google Wave, the next-generation communication and collaboration tool.
  • Google gave every attendee a HTC Magic phone (they call it Ion)!

Read on about our thoughts.

Our Thoughts

After attending the conference, we feel more excited about Android than ever. Google just launched Android 1.5 (aka Cupcake), and is already hard at work on Android 2.0 (aka Donut). We know this because the speakers at many of the technical sessions talk about what’s being changed in Donut. Google’s progress on the web and desktop are also impressive, but less relevant to our mobile interest. However, Google definitely gets that the new generation of applications must work across mobile devices and desktops, and they see using standard web technologies to be the best way to tackle that problem. During the Thursday keynote, Google said that it only took them 5% extra engineering effort to get Google Wave to work on Android, since must of the code is the same. That’s a very impressive number, considering most of today’s mobile apps are written from ground up.

We are obviously happy about getting a free Android phone. But that’s very smart marketing from Google’s point of view. The attendees are all developers on Google’s platforms one form or another, and you can’t possibly find a better group of people to target in trying to make them develop for Android. What was impressive to us was also the amount of detail they put into the phone. It has custom packaging, custom casing, and even the boot logo is custom and says “Google I/O 09”. The phones also come with a T-Mobile SIM card and 30 days of service (including unlimited data). Our estimate is that it probably cost Google anywhere from $200 to $300 per phone. So they probably spent $800,000 to $1.2 million on the phones – money well spent for targeting this group.

Google is assaulting Microsoft from many directions. Their push for HTML5 and in enabling web apps to have functionality that traditionally only native applications have is obviously trying to make Microsoft’s Windows dominance irrelevant. Their push for Android is attacking an already battered Windows Mobile franchise. With the announcement of Google Wave, they are now also competing with Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Sharepoint, Unified Communications, etc. More than once, Google derided Microsoft and Internet Explorer during their Keynotes.

Whether Google Wave will be successful is remained to be seen. No doubt it is a very innovative product. They took a problem that has been around for many years and solve it in a very creative way. But there is a lot of inertia in what people are used to doing. Sometimes a particular product may not be the best innovation but when people are used to it, it is very difficult to change human behavior. The QWERTY keyboard and steering wheel are such examples.

Google has once again proven their engineering prowess and their ability to innovate. But we worry that there is still no proven business model behind many of their products and services. Free is great for users, but ultimately, products and services either need to be profitable or fit into a larger strategy. Aside from continuing to grow user base and add advertising sockets, it’s not immediately clear to us how Google plans to monetize many of their services. But in the short term, Google has no need for concern. They are still making boatload of money from their advertising programs, and nobody is even close to touching them.

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