14 DAY TRIAL // Google's yearly developers extravaganza is about to get underway. In less than a couple of hours Google will begin the two day event with a keynote speech followed by tens of sessions. The main focus for the vent will be on Android and Chrome, Google's two major platforms.
"With more than 5,000 participants from 60 countries, including 110 sessions, 261 speakers and 152 Sandbox partners, this year’s I/O will be the biggest one yet," Google's Vic Gundotra wrote in a blog post previewing the conference.
"This year’s keynote presentations will highlight the biggest opportunities for developers and feature two of our most popular and important developer platforms: Android and Chrome," he added.
"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," he explained.
The two keynote speeches will center on Android and Chrome, though Google hasn't too many details about what's about to be revealed.
One thing that has been confirmed to be launched at Google I/O is the "Music Beta by Google" service. It's stripped down version of what Google originally had in mind, but it's the best it could do.
Google demoed a music service with Android integration at last year's I/O but nothing has come of it until now. The company is no longer waiting on the music labels to make up their mind and will be launching a rather basic music locker service.
Google Music has been confirmed, but there are several rumored announcements as well. Google TV may get its second chance at this year's I/O and there is talk of an updated software and hardware combo which promises to fix the big problems of the still budding platform.
We should probably see some details about the upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich as well which should be interesting since it should be the version that reconciles the two branches, Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
Google's somewhat forgotten Chrome OS should be getting a big bump as well seeing as it should be hitting the stores in less than a couple of months.
Of course, Google's social efforts may get some attention too, particularly the +1 feature. There's plenty of interesting things to look forward to, but nothing hugely impressive from the looks of it. But Google could very well have a big surprise announcement of some, previously unheard of product.