google i/o 2011

SAN FRANCISCO--Google expects Chrome OS to be a success. But it's chosen its terms for success very carefully.

Google shares with many of its rivals a natural, reasonable ambition to measure success by market penetration. This week at the Google I/O conference here, the company was quick to tout that there have been 100 million activations of Android devices, that 310 different Android devices have gone on sale so far, and that Android users have downloaded 4.5 billion apps to date.

Though data-obsessed Google doubtless will count how many Chromebooks are sold, that isn't the measurement … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google isn't the only big tech company with two operating systems. But it's the only one with two that take such a different approach.

Android and Chrome OS each got a day to themselves here at Google I/O a conference designed to fire up programmer interest in Google's technology.

With the new Android 3.1, an update to the tablet-centric Honeycomb version, Google yesterday added the ability for people to plug in keyboards, mice, game controllers, and many other USB and Bluetooth devices. In short, it's making the tablet more into a PC, architecturally … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--On the second day of Google's developer conference here, the Google team announced a feature that lets developers add one-touch in-app purchasing to their Chrome Web Store apps, using Google's payment system.

Now with a single click, app users can make a purchase and then jump right back to the application, be it a comic book, game, or whatever else.

In addition to making it easy for users to make one-touch payments, said Google's Vikas Gupta, the company wanted to make it simple for developers to add the feature--it requires the addition of only a single … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Android is open-source software, but it doesn't come with much of an open-source community, and the Google leader of the project explained why yesterday.

Because people can scrutinize Android's source code, modify it, and build it into their own hardware, the mobile operating system qualifies as open-source software. But Google exercises tight control over what gets built into the official Android software, what gets released as Android, and when that source code appears--especially with the tablet-oriented Honeycomb version.

The reason for Google's approach is so the company can control Android's interfaces, the underlying features that … Read more

Today's Google doodle honors choreographer Martha Graham's birthday--and with animated dancers revealing it, the doodle also showcases the company's push to build a more dynamic Web.

The only problem: some people find it's slowing their machines. That's hardly the outcome that Google--obsessed over every millisecond of delay in delivering search results--could have wanted.

The dynamic doodle is a rarity for Google, but you can expect more as the company tries to draw attention to what can be done on the Web, not just to the subjects of its doodles. Indeed, Google had a whole session … Read more

Editor's note: We used Cover It Live for this event, so if you missed the live blog, you can still replay it in the embedded component below. Replaying the event will give you all the live updates along with commentary from our readers and CNET reporters. For those of you who just want the updates, we've included them in regular text here. To get the key points from today's announcement, you can check out our summary of what got announced, in our story here.

Google I/O day one was about Android and music, but the second … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--iRobot hopes someday soon a robot waiter will deliver your food--and it might well use an Android tablet to see, hear, speak, and think.

At the Google I/O show here today, iRobot CEO Colin Angle showed off a prototype called AVA that the company plans to begin selling this year to developers to try to ignite the market.

Today there are two general robot types that are sustainable businesses: high-end, expensive ones for defusing bombs in Afghanistan or monitoring radiation in Japan, and low-end ones for vacuuming. Angle wants an intermediate category and believes tablets will enable that market to develop.

"The third option is the interesting one, with technology advances enabling robots to do things more like Rosie from the Jetsons," Angle told thousands of developers assembled at Google's show. "That's where you all come in. The robot industry can't be trusted to solve this problem. We need the mobile computing industry to come in and save our bacon through things like this."

AVA grafts a tablet onto a mobile robot body that can navigate floors. An Android-powered Motorola Xoom tablet was not just the brains of the operation, but the senses and face as well.

"We in the robot industry realized this is a fantastic head for a robot," with a camera and microphone for visual input and a screen and speakers to let people interact with the robot. "What was missing was the body," Angle said.

Thus, AVA, with a tablet on top of a stalk and a wider base with wheels to move around. The robot can create its own map of an area as it navigates. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Google defended its music storage service at a press conference today shortly after it unveiled the service at its developer conference here.

The new Google Music service, which CNET first reported last night, allows people to store up to 20,000 songs in the Internet "cloud." The benefit of doing this is that they will then be able to access the music from any Web browser that supports Flash or Android devices. The service is still being beta-tested and will only be offered to a select group of invitation-only users in the U.S. Initially, the service … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Android, Google's top developer priority, hogged the spotlight at Google I/O today--in part as the foundation for new Google music and video services.

Among the Google I/O announcements today:

• Google announced Android 3.1, an update to Honeycomb that adds new interface options, lets people plug in USB devices, and sports a movie rental service that works directly from the device. Android 3.1 comes to Motorola Xoom owners today and other tablets later.

• After Honeycomb comes Ice Cream Sandwich in the fourth quarter, which incorporates Honeycomb features but works on phones and Google TV … Read more