I find it amusing that giving money to Google is almost spoken in terms of privilege. "Today, Google will allow users to buy Google Glass for $1500" or in this case, solving a puzzle for the opportunity to buy a $900 ticket outside of the if-you-win-you-pay lottery.
More amusing is that I/O is a conference of how to use Google services and platforms[0]. Really, look at it. It's almost entirely talks on how to build products for their platforms and pay-to-use APIs.
You might say that it's a sign of success in the tech world when your brand builds this much of a following.
Presumably the developers still get their money's worth. If /when they don't soon or later these conferences will be full of empty chairs. So the question each person asks: "what do I gain by it," not what Google gains by it.
Why are the two coupled anyway? That's a huge issue with the WWDC and it's becoming an issue here. If you want developers, don't offer "the next big thing" in consumer electronics to anyone who attends, then leave registration open for everyone.
Also initiatives like Google Glass are certainly not copying another product, but are among the most ambitious consumer R&D projects of any company on Earth. It is a category of product that does not exist.
The answer can't be "developers" or "to learn things." Not while the prevailing reason people attend I/O is to get the new shiny toys and the primary means for getting a ticket is a random lottery with no prerequisites for entry and no fee to prevent gaming. What we need for learning is mostly put on YouTube promptly, so presence is not necessary there, either.
I don't understand it at all.
I'm glad we collectively understand the general purpose of downvotes. There's a reason they aren't defaulted to 0 pointers; they aren't "agree/disagree".
Go back to slashdot where inept moderation is the norm.
https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/push-to-deploy
The second image from the bottom has an URL plastered on it. When I noticed, I wondered how that happened. I tried the URL in incognito tab but it requested permission to identify my Google account, so I thought it's for internal Google use only, and closed the tab.
On a side note I couldn't find the I/O with different colors from Australia, no matter how much I refresh the page.
Location based maybe?
