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Google I/O 2014 registration was supposed to start April 8 and run through April 10, but has now been delayed and expanded, running April 15-18, according to a low-key announcement from Google.
“We’re still working to make the registration process even easier for you, and it will now be open four days starting next week (opening next Tuesday and closing Friday),” read the early-morning April 8 post on the Google Developers Google+ page. “After the registration window closes, applicants will randomly be selected and we’ll send ticket purchase confirmation emails shortly thereafter.”
A Google spokesman had no comment when asked by eWEEK to explain the reasons for the delay. “Nothing more to add outside of the post—looking forward to letting folks easily register next week!” the spokesman responded.
In March, Google had announced that registration for this year’s seventh annual Google I/O event would be different from past years—interested developers now have to apply to attend and wait to learn if they are selected. That means registration for the event is no longer first-come, first-served, with thousands of developers trying to log in at once online and meeting a crush of other registration hopefuls in a war of digital ones and zeroes. In recent years, the old registration process meant the slots for attendance were often filled in just a few minutes.
The Google I/O developers conference is arguably the most important and hotly awaited Google developer event of the spring. Google has already launched its Website for the June 25-26 gathering.
The move essentially will change what has become a huge rush to register the moment the registration Web page opens each year. Many developers have complained in the past about the difficulty of getting in to register under the old system, so Google is trying this new approach this year. In the past, it was like trying to beat the rush when tickets go on sale online for a beloved and famous rock and roll band.
The registration delay, however, which was announced just as the original registration period was supposed to begin, was not appreciated by some developers and hopeful attendees who posted their disdain on the event’s Google+ page.
“+Google Developers that’s not fair,” wrote Pranjal Desai. “The whole registration setup is unfair this year for developers already but making the window bigger is even more unfair.”
Willem-Jan Boogerd also was not happy about the change. “Not nice Google,” he wrote. “People coming from overseas have to plan these things ahead.”
Others defended Google’s action to change and expand the schedule for registrations.
“+Pranjal Desai, how is this any less fair than registration being open for 15 seconds and closing because it sells out?” wrote Andrew Martonik.
Another commenter, Ivan Yudhi, wrote, “Both systems are unfair. It’s just with this year’s method, Google doesn’t need to worry about crashing their system due to thousands of people clicking F5 at the same time.”
Sven Jacobs wrote that he believes that “at least the new system is more fair than the old system! What about people not living in US time zones? With the old system they had to get up at night just to wildly click on buttons and refresh pages for about 15 seconds until all tickets were sold out? Now we all have four days where we can register for the lottery. I think that’s as fair as it can get.”
Google I/O Developers Conference Registration Delayed Until April 15
Full details of the events, sessions and keynotes for this year’s I/O show are not yet posted or announced, but those holes will be filled as the conference nears.
What is known so far is that Google will again broadcast a live stream of the conference keynote and its sessions so that developers who can’t attend can still have access to the goings-on. Interested developers will also be able to attend an “I/O Extended” event near them, where groups gather in their own local communities to watch the Webcasts of the conference together. Details on these features will come later, according to Google.
The 2014 conference will be held June 25-26 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, according to Google. As the conference gets nearer, developers can also follow the event on the Google Developers Google+ page and on the Google Developers Blog.
General admission tickets to the event are $900, while academic admission tickets are $300. Tickets must be purchased using a Google Wallet account, and sign-in must be done using a Google+ account. Registrants must provide a credit card number when they sign up, but the card will not be charged unless the applicant is randomly selected for a ticket, according to Google.
The Google I/O events are always awaited by developers, where they can hear the latest news about the company’s innovations and platforms.
At the 2013 Google I/O event, Google’s unveiled its first-ever Google Play music subscription service that allows users to access all the music in Google’s collection on the fly and add it to their personal collections. Also announced were Google Play game saving and sharing services, new APIs for Android that allow developers to create apps that can be restricted to specific locations, and tools that will help developers improve the sales and marketing of their apps for Android.
In 2012, Google I/O was the stuff of legend, featuring the introduction of Google Glass, with an amazing live-video stunt with parachutists from an airship wearing Google Glass headsets landing on the Moscone West rooftop and repelling, bicycling and running into the conference to the cheers of thousands in order to give the wearable computers to Google co-founder Sergey Brin—who was already wearing one himself. Google also unveiled not one, but two new devices, the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q home cloud-based home entertainment hub (ill-fated, as it turned out), along with a bevy of new software and developer tools. The 2012 new products included the Jelly Bean version of Android.