There was plenty of excitement in San Francisco’s Moscone Center as a giant on-screen clock counted down the final seconds until execs would take the stage to kick off the annual developers conference, called I/O.
Not a bad reception,. considering expectations for big headline announcements is small.
Google - like most companies that take to a keynote stage - kicked off with a recap, a look back to highlight their successes, notably Android. They talked momentum with devices and apps. Nothing new. We already knew this.
Writing on the Google Blog, Senior Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra wrote that “Google engineers from Andy Rubin and Sundar Pichai’s teams will unveil new features, preview upcoming updates, and provide new insights into the growing momentum behind these platforms.” Rubin and Pichai run Android and Chrome respectively.
Android developers were briefed on Android@Home ("Open source libraries that will enable developers to build apps that can discover, connect and communicate with devices and appliances in the home") and Project Tungsten ("Hardware reference design that runs the Android OS and the Android@Home software framework").
• The next major release of Android is called Ice Cream Sandwich (aka Android 2.4) for mobile devices and Android 3.1 for Google TV. The Ice Cream Sandwich pitch: "One OS everywhere, state of the art UI, advanced app framework, open source." The too-cute logo:
Movie rentals are now live on Android Market. Choose from thousands of movie titles and watch instantly on the web or on a Verizon Motorola Xoom ("support for more devices, including phones, coming soon").
Google is also entering the cloud music business. Music Beta enables users to upload music files into the cloud and then access them from various Android devices. The demo looked similar — almost identical in fact — to the Amazon Cloud Player service released a few months earlier.
Music Beta is being rolled out in phases. Initially it will be available to US users via invitation only (sound familiar?). To request an invitation go to music.google.com/about
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