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I enjoyed the silent disco and free concerts, but it felt very over the top and expensive, basically just a big ego display for Google.
I can understand now why my company is less eager to send developers to events like these every year.
I can’t remember the last time I/O was interesting. I never feel like Google introduces something important or noteworthy.
I was very enthusiastic about Google I/O in the past (around the year 2010). Full of nice tech talks; I learned a lot. These years, I couldn't care less. It's all business talk. I guess developers are not the target audience anymore (and for newcomers, perhaps the "I/O" may be misleading).
At every I/O there is a "keynote" and a "developer keynote", and similarly there are business / product talks and developer-focused talks. In fact, they even create entirely separate playlists on YouTube for the dev/non-dev talks.
As a Staff Eng who leads and mentors engineers who live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services, I find many of the developer-focused talks invaluable for getting others in my team up to speed on what's new and what's coming soon. Most of these talks are given by engineers and involve concise code examples which quickly convey the gist of new functionality.
Is Google relevant? They feel like Microsoft in the Ballmer era, coasting on products released 15 years ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was that? (I expect whatever year you give other people will say it was already just corporate talk before then)
Around 2013 is when I/Os became less about showing technological progress and more about corporate talk. Examples of I/O topics before 2013: Android, Maps API, App Engine (cloud), Chrome, AJAX for their APIs, real-time collaboration/Wave, Google TV (early predecessor to Android TV), Chromebooks, Chrome Web Store, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Glass, Gmail updates, Google+, YouTube updates. Most I/O topics after 2…
There might be no sessions for stuff like how to use web APIs because these are already mature and well-documented technologies. I/O is about showcasing new stuff after all.
I was very enthusiastic about Google I/O in the past (around the year 2010). Full of nice tech talks; I learned a lot. These years, I couldn't care less. It's all business talk. I guess developers are not the target audience anymore (and for newcomers, perhaps the "I/O" may be misleading).
Heh, yours and other comments here disparaging I/O as "business" or "corporate" talk these days come across as quite ignorant - and I don't mean this in a nasty way, more in a literal way. It seems perhaps you're missing the fact there are many different styles of talks for many audiences. At every I/O there is a "keynote" and a "developer keynote", and similarly there are business / product talks and developer-focus…
Google no longer innovates or launches products of note. They throw ideas at the wall, like spaghetti, and hope things stick.
Perverse incentives create competing products, dead end projects, and invariably everything created winds up getting cancelled.
Google got drunk off of easy search ad revenue. Their founding leadership went off to do zeppelins and politicking. Now that golden goose looks like it may be cooked.
Google had the Bell Labs of AI research, but their ability to build product around it looks a lot more like IBM Watson.
Over the next half decade, their top tier talent will leave and get venture funding to do their own things with their own equity.