Much of the excitement of Day 2 at Google I/O centred around the Chrome browser and OS Much of the excitement of Day 2 at Google I/O centred around the Chrome browser and OS
Following day one’s gadget bonanza Google introduced a raft of new web based products at Google I/O on Thursday. Day two of the conference saw the unveiling of a new cloud service for business, upgraded office applications and a new version of Chrome which works on iOS.
Google Compute Engine
The ‘Google Compute Engine’ is a new cloud service for businesses set to compete with products like Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Microsoft’s Windows Azure. Urs Hölzle, senior vice president at Google, said that the Google Compute Engine delivers up to 50% more computing power per dollar than other platforms.
Upgrades to Chrome were expected and the browser had already launched on Android but its arrival in Apple’s App Store opens up what has recently become the world’s most popular browser to a whole new customer base.
Edit docs offline
The best new feature for Google Docs or Google Drive (as it’s now being called) is that users can now edit documents off-line. Until now, the Microsoft Office competitor could only be used when connected to the Internet but the upgrade allows users to work whilst on flights or in remote areas. The catch is that this feature works only with Chrome or Chrome OS.
The browser’s user base has grown from 70 million to 310 million in the past 12 months and these new developments can only help accelerate its market dominance. The other major announcement of the day is that Chromebooks (the laptop launched last year that operates entirely through the chrome browser) will go on retail sale with Best Buy before Christmas.
Day 2 didn’t quite match the razzmatazz of Wednesday but the crowd were treated to a yet another skydiving act, in which the divers all wore the Google Glass glasses and filmed their descent from the air. You have to wonder what they’re going to do to top this next year!
