What Can Google I/O 2012 Offer this Year?

Google I/O has become the company's single most effective way to expose the world to the Company's culture. This conference allows the employees to reach out to its vast developer base and preview some of the best new products that the company has on offer. It is also the stage where some of the biggest and most ambitious projects were launched. For example, Maps, Chrome, Android were all previously launched at this event.

This Google I/O at the Moscone Convention Centre in San Francisco is slated to be no different with a number of high profile announcements and product releases slated for all the days of the conference. Some of the major announcements made in the first 2 days of the conference are expected by industry sources, while others were just over-the-top and totally unexpected.

Google+ celebrated its first birthday at this conference. The first major announcement was the launch of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean which comes loaded with numerous improvements to boost efficiency and battery life. It also boasts of Google Now as a competitor to Siri and a replacement of sorts to Google Voice.

The speed of Android Jelly Bean was showcased on Google's Nexus 7 which blows the Amazon Kindle Fire right out of the water with its numerous features. Nexus 7 was revealed to be manufactured by Asus and performed better that Asus's Transformer Prime tablet. Nexus Q was also unveiled on Day 1. It is currently billed as the world's first Social Media Streaming Player. It looks to replace and go beyond a set-top box and become the centre of your home's connection to digital media entertainment.

Other major announcements revolved around Chrome being made compatible to all iOS devices. This makes the Chrome Web Store an alternative for Apple users. The Chrome Web Store hosts numerous apps that run on the Chrome browser and hence create a new environment for users, while simultaneously simplifying work for developers.

Google's showman style preview of Google Glass was the talk of the first day. Sergey Brin interrupted a presentation to show a demo of the Google Glass technology used by a number of sky divers who parachuted to the conference venue. They used the Glass to create a Video Hangout. Pre-orders for the Google Glass were sold and customers received a memento to hold on to till they received the actual product.

The second day of the conference saw many more significant announcements such as the launch of Google Drive which allows home users and companies to move their office productivity tools to the cloud. Users can share and edit the files simultaneously while viewing the files across all devices which run a browser. Google Drive even works in the absence of an Internet connection without any breaks.

By far the most significant competition to Amazon's cloud storage and computing business was offered in the form of Google Compute Engine. While still in the testing phase, the beta version alone showed far better performance than competition.

Guest Author

This is a guest post by Jem Larson of buyVerizon.com, a site that offers savings and current information on verizon internet.