Google and Partners Welcome More than 3,000 Developers to Annual Developer Conference; New Products and Initiatives Make it Easier to Build for a More Powerful Web
SAN FRANCISCO (May 27, 2009) – Today Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) kicks off Google I/O 2009, its largest developer conference of the year, with a series of sessions and product announcements designed to make the web an even more powerful platform for application development. I/O 2009 is being held May 27 and 28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and is expected to draw more than 3,000 developers from more than 45 countries. The conference opens at 9:15 am with a keynote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Google Vice President of Developer Platforms Vic Gundotra, and over the course of two full days will include more than 80 technical sessions, breakouts, fireside chats, and other opportunities to exchange ideas with subject-matter experts from Google and partner companies. More than 130 speakers from more than 40 companies will be featured at the event.
One of the key themes of this year’s event will be the unprecedented acceleration of the open web platform: Nearly half a billion people now use browsers that are rooted in open source technology, which have quintupled their processing power in less than a year. Now, the new functionality in HTML 5 – from graphics and location to local storage and background processing – is enabling developers to build uniquely powerful web applications.
Today Google is also announcing new products and initiatives designed to promote application development on the web, including the following:
Google Web Elements: A new product launching today, Google Web Elements is an easy way to incorporate Google products onto a website or blog. This includes content such as Maps, News and YouTube videos, as well as social comments functionality by Google Friend Connect. Already, Google has 4 billion API calls a day. Google Web Elements makes it even easier to add functionality to sites by choosing optional customizations and copying and pasting a few lines of code. More information is available at www.google.com/webelements.
Java Language Support in App Engine: Today Google is launching general availability of Java language support in Google App Engine, providing all developers with an end-to-end Java language solution for building AJAX web applications. An early look at Java language support in App Engine was released to a limited number of developers at Google’s April 7 Campfire One developer event, and in the last two months more than 10,000 Java language applications have been deployed on the platform. Over 80,000 applications have been built on App Engine since it was launched in April 2008.
Android Developer Challenge 2: Today Google is announcing the second phase of the Android Developer Challenge, a Google-funded initiative to reward developers for building innovative and useful applications for the Android mobile platform. For Android Developer Challenge 2 (ADC 2), Google will let users of Android-powered phones participate in the judging process through the use of an on-phone judging application. Awards will be presented to the top applications, up to a quarter of a million dollars for the overall winner, which will be announced in November 2009. More information on ADC 2 can be found at code.google.com/android/adc/.
"Bet on the web," said Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Developer Products at Google. "Its rate of innovation has dramatically accelerated over the past 12 months, giving rise to an open web platform that’s fundamentally more capable and more sophisticated than even a year ago. The combination of HTML 5, a vibrant developer community, and the pervasiveness of modern web browsers is delivering a programming model and an end-user experience that will surprise and delight people."
As always, Google I/O 2009 will include a mix of practical, hands-on advice for building web apps, as well as opportunities to learn about and discuss emerging trends. Sessions will cover tools developed both inside and outside of Google, and topic areas will include Android and Mobile; Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Maps and Geo, YouTube, OpenSocial, and AJAX.
New this year will be the "Developer Sandbox" sessions, in which more than 30 members of the developer community will showcase applications they’ve built and share their experiences in working with the latest web and mobile technologies.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, please visit www.google.com.
Google, Google I/O, Google Web Elements, Google App Engine and Android are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 27, 2009) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that Dave Girouard, President, Enterprise, will participate in a question-and-answer session at the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch 2009 Technology Conference in New York. The session is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. Eastern Time / 8:15 a.m. Pacific Time on Thursday, June 4, 2009.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Christin Engelberth, a 6th grade student from Bernard A Harris Jr. High School in San Antonio, Texas has been named the national winner of the 2009 Doodle 4 Google competition. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, announced the winner during a special ceremony to honor the regional winners at the Smithsonian’s, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City. Christin Engelberth’s doodle will appear on the Google homepage in the U.S. on Thursday, May 21st.
A "doodle" is a fun logo design that appears on the Google homepage periodically to celebrate special events, holidays, or the lives of artists and inventors. This is the second year that Google has hosted a contest for K-12 students from schools in the U.S. to design their own version of the Google logo, inspired by this year’s theme, "What I Wish for the World". Following today’s ceremony, the winning doodles will be part of a national exhibit at the Smithsonian’s, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum that will be open to the public from May 21st through July 5th.
Christin Engelberth’s doodle was chosen from over 28,000 doodles submitted by students across the country. Marissa Mayer and Dennis Hwang, Google’s original doodler, selected the national winner based artistic merit, creativity, expression of the theme and other criteria.
The winning doodle is titled "A New Beginning" and Christin Engelberth describes her doodle as a way to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more." In addition to having her doodle appear on Google’s homepage, Christin Engelberth will receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer, a t-shirt with her doodle and a $25,000 technology grant for her school.
The three national finalists (one from each grade group) were selected by public vote. Nearly 6 million public votes were cast online (www.google.com/doodle4google) from May 11th to May 18th. Also, this year Google awarded a District Quality Participation Prize in the amount of $10,000 to the school district that had the greatest quality participation from its schools.
The finalists, listed below, received a trip to New York City, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle.
National Finalists
Grades K-3 Name: Miriam Elizabeth Lowery School: Austin Peay Elementary City, State: Covington, TN
Grades 7-9 Name: Blakely Linz School: Indian Hill Middle School City, State: Cincinnati, OH
Grades 10-12 Name: Emerald Lu School: Covington Latin School City, State: Covington, KY
The District Quality Participation Prize is awarded to Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Why: Google to offer an insider’s perspective on Search including recent search innovations. Speakers will include VP of Search Engineering, Udi Manber, and VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer.
About Google Inc. Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
# # #
Google is a trademark of Google Inc. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Class of 2009! First I’d like you to get up, wave and cheer your supportive family and friends! Show your love!
It is a great honor for me to be here today.
Now wait a second. I know: that’s such a cliché. You’re thinking: every graduation speaker says that – It’s a great honor. But, in my case, it really is so deeply true – being here is more special and more personal for me than most of you know. I’d like to tell you why.
A long time ago, in the cold September of 1962, there was a Steven’s co-op at this very university. That co-op had a kitchen with a ceiling that had been cleaned by student volunteers every decade or so. Picture a college girl named Gloria, climbing up high on a ladder, struggling to clean that filthy ceiling. Standing on the floor, a young boarder named Carl was admiring the view. And that’s how they met. They were my parents, so I suppose you could say I’m a direct result of that kitchen chemistry experiment, right here at Michigan. My Mom is here with us today, and we should probably go find the spot and put a plaque up on the ceiling that says: "Thanks Mom and Dad!"
Everyone in my family went to school here at Michigan: me, my brother, my Mom and Dad – all of us. My Dad actually got the quantity discount: all three and a half of his degrees are from here. His Ph.D. was in Communication Science because they thought Computers were just a passing fad. He earned it 44 years ago. He and Mom made a big sacrifice for that. They argued at times over pennies, while raising my newborn brother. Mom typed my Dad’s dissertation by hand. This velvet hood I’m wearing, this was my Dad’s. And this diploma, just like the one you’re are about to get, that was my Dad’s. And my underwear, that was… oh never mind.
My father’s father worked in the Chevy plant in Flint, Michigan. He was an assembly line worker. He drove his two children here to Ann Arbor, and told them: That is where you’re going to go to college. Both his kids did graduate from Michigan. That was the American dream. His daughter, Beverly, is with us today. My Grandpa used to carry an "Alley Oop" hammer – a heavy iron pipe with a hunk of lead melted on the end. The workers made them during the sit-down strikes to protect themselves. When I was growing up, we used that hammer whenever we needed to pound a stake or something into the ground. It is wonderful that most people don’t need to carry a heavy blunt object for protection anymore. But just in case, I have it here.
My Dad became a professor at uh… Michigan State, and I was an incredibly lucky boy. A professor’s life is pretty flexible, and he was able to spend oodles of time raising me. Could there be a better upbringing than university brat?
What I’m trying to tell you is that this is WAY more than just a homecoming for me. It’s not easy for me to express how proud I am to be here, with my Mom, my brother and my wife Lucy, and with all of you, at this amazing institution that is responsible for my very existence. I am thrilled for all of you, and I’m thrilled for your families and friends, as all of us join the great, big Michigan family I feel I’ve been a part of all of my life.
What I’m also trying to tell you is that I know exactly what it feels like to be sitting in your seat, listening to some old gasbag give a long-winded commencement speech. Don’t worry. I’ll be brief.
I have a story about following dreams. Or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about finding a path to make those dreams real.
You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?
Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web – he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!
When I was here at Michigan, I had actually been taught how to make dreams real! I know it sounds funny, but that is what I learned in a summer camp converted into a training program called Leadershape. Their slogan is to have a "healthy disregard for the impossible". That program encouraged me to pursue a crazy idea at the time: I wanted to build a personal rapid transit system on campus to replace the buses. It was a futuristic way of solving our transportation problem. I still think a lot about transportation – you never loose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby. Many things that people labor hard to do now, like cooking, cleaning, and driving will require much less human time in the future. That is, if we "have a healthy disregard for the impossible" and actually build new solutions.
I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. I know that sounds completely nuts. But, since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. There are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name. They all travel as if they are pack dogs and stick to each other like glue. The best people want to work the big challenges. That is what happened with Google. Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. How can that not get you excited? But we almost didn’t start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
As a Ph.D. student, I actually had three projects I wanted to work on. Thank goodness my advisor said, "why don’t you work on the web for a while". He gave me some seriously good advice because the web was really growing with people and activity, even in 1995! Technology and especially the internet can really help you be lazy. Lazy? What I mean is a group of three people can write software that millions can use and enjoy. Can three people answer the phone a million times a day? Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy!
Overall, I know it seems like the world is crumbling out there, but it is actually a great time in your life to get a little crazy, follow your curiosity, and be ambitious about it. Don’t give up on your dreams. The world needs you all!
So here’s my final story:
On a day like today, you might feel exhilarated — like you’ve just been shot out of a cannon at the circus – and even invincible. Don’t ever forget that incredible feeling. But also: always remember that the moments we have with friends and family, the chances we have to do things that might make a big difference in the world, or even to make a small difference to someone you love — all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast, and a whole lot sooner than you think.
In late March 1996, soon after I had moved to Stanford for grad school, my Dad had difficultly breathing and drove to the hospital. Two months later, he died. And that was it. I was completely devastated. Many years later, after a startup, after falling in love, and after so many of life’s adventures, I found myself thinking about my Dad. Lucy and I were far away in a steaming hot village walking through narrow streets. There were wonderful friendly people everywhere, but it was a desperately poor place – people used the bathroom inside and it flowed out into the open gutter and straight into the river. We touched a boy with a limp leg, the result of paralysis from polio. Lucy and I were in rural India – one of the few places where Polio still exists. Polio is transmitted fecal to oral, usually through filthy water. Well, my Dad had Polio. He went on a trip to Tennessee in the first grade and caught it. He was hospitalized for two months and had to be transported by military DC-3 back home – his first flight. My Dad wrote, "Then, I had to stay in bed for over a year, before I started back to school". That is actually a quote from his fifth grade autobiography. My Dad had difficulty breathing his whole life, and the complications of Polio are what took him from us too soon. He would have been very upset that Polio still persists even though we have a vaccine. He would have been equally upset that back in India we had polio virus on our shoes from walking through the contaminated gutters that spread the disease. We were spreading the virus with every footstep, right under beautiful kids playing everywhere. The world is on the verge of eliminating polio, with 328 people infected so far this year. Let’s get it done soon. Perhaps one of you will do that.
My Dad was valedictorian of Flint Mandeville High School 1956 class of about 90 kids. I happened across his graduating speech recently, and it blew me away. 53 years ago at his graduation my Dad said: "…we are entering a changing world, one of automation and employment change where education is an economic necessity. We will have increased periods of time to do as we wish, as our work week and retirement age continue to decline. … We shall take part in, or witness, developments in science, medicine, and industry that we can not dream of today. … It is said that the future of any nation can be determined by the care and preparation given to its youth. If all the youths of America were as fortunate in securing an education as we have been, then the future of the United States would be even more bright than it is today."
If my Dad was alive today, the thing I think he would be most happy about is that Lucy and I have a baby in the hopper. I think he would have been annoyed that I hadn’t gotten my Ph.D. yet (thanks, Michigan!). Dad was so full of insights, of excitement about new things, that to this day, I often wonder what he would think about some new development. If he were here today – well, it would be one of the best days of his life. He’d be like a kid in a candy store. For a day, he’d be young again.
Many of us are fortunate enough to be here with family. Some of us have dear friends and family to go home to. And who knows, perhaps some of you, like Lucy and I, are dreaming about future families of your own. Just like me, your families brought you here, and you brought them here. Please keep them close and remember: they are what really matters in life.
Thanks, Mom; Thanks, Lucy. And thank you, all, very much.
