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. 

• 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 http://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. 

More information about Google I/O 2009 is available at http://code.google.com/events/io/. 

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 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.

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