Last week's Google I/O developer conference held in San Francisco, CA yielded a lot of surprising announcements spanning a number of product segments and technologies. But more importantly, it signified Google's official entry into the personal computing, home entertainment and desktop OS spaces.

The revelations included a long-awaited unified mobile OS for tablets and smartphones called Ice Cream Sandwich coming later this year, a new cloud-enabled music locker service titled Music Beta, streaming movie rentals on YouTube, as well as two Chromebook browser OS notebooks coming to U.S. stores in June.

Google I/O has traditionally been Google's yearly event to unveil new technology initiatives and get developers on board. In addition to revealing new products and directions, the event also includes a two-day pow-wow and intensive training.

Five-thousand participants from around the world attended this year's event, and each received a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, a Google Chromebook, and Verizon MiFi mobile hotspots with three months of free service. Attendees also received invitations to test new cloud services launched during the event.

Showing how it is evolving from being a purely software-focused and Internet advertising-based company, Google revealed products and services that compete in the mainstream consumer home entertainment and personal technology space, currently being driven by the likes of Apple and Microsoft.

Google may be a multi-billion dollar company, but its approach to new business has been similar to that of a startup. Google will back many new initiatives for as long as they make sense, but the company won't shy away from abandoning those technologies should they fail to catch on. It won't allow itself to lose too much money or developer hours in areas where competition is insurmountable, or where its offerings are clearly inferior.

Cases in point: recent projects like Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Video, Orkut and selling Nexus One smartphones online were heavily promoted by Google but subsequently received the dump-and-run treatment when they failed to gain traction.

Having a stake in a number of emerging businesses makes it possible for Google to pick and choose the areas where it can make a bigger impact, leverage its advertising model, and make a long term profit.

Google Everywhere

The Google I/O event started off by tracing the evolution of the Android OS, which debuted in 2008. Some of the latest statistics include 100 million activated Android devices, 400,000 daily Android activations, and 4.5 billion installed apps from the Android Market.

Beyond the highly successful mobile presence in Android smartphones and tablets, Google is clearly aiming its sights for the home entertainment market. While its Google TV product was last year's big Google I/O announcement (another initiative that has failed to gain much momentum), Google's gone back to the cloud with a daring new streaming music service.

Music Beta by Google allows users to upload their music collections to Google's servers and listen to them from anywhere. Currently available only to users in the U.S. and only by invitation, the service allows up to 20,000 songs to be stored and played back on any browser, smartphone or tablet. Music Beta is not an online music store, and only works with songs already owned by users.

This new service seems to be more about positioning and beating competitors to the punch since Apple has long been rumoured to be preparing a similar cloud streaming service for iTunes.

Apple purchased music streaming service Lala in 2009, and while it has not yet announced any integration of this service, speculation is running high that it will soon introduce an iCloud streaming music service that makes user's iTunes libraries available online for streaming from any number of devices.

Google's advantage is that it isn't selling music or videos, and it doesn't need to court the music publishers or undercut the likes of Amazon or Apple for content. It is providing an online storage system, and a convenience for which it feels users will happily pay.

Competing against Netflix streaming and iTunes, Google also launched a new YouTube movie rental service offering 3,000 titles from NBC/Universal, Sony, and Warner Brothers studios.

Leveraging YouTube's dominant position as the leading video streaming service, Google's clearly moving beyond the amateur nature of the online videos it serves and looking to play in a larger field.

For consumers, this means yet another way to watch streaming movies on their PCs, smartphones and tablets. Rentals will range from US$2.99 to $3.99, and customers have 30 days to start viewing and 24 hours to complete watching the movies, which can be viewed offline. The service is to be accessible from any Internet browser, on Android smartphones and tablets.

Will this service be better than Netflix? Not likely, Netflix is well entrenched in this space, offers TV shows, movies and documentaries for a fixed $8/mo., and can be pushed to HDTVs though a variety of devices. Google needs to have a presence in this space since it is the world's biggest cloud technology company. And while it's video offerings may not be as compelling as the competition, they serve as a placeholder and starting point while Google negotiates bigger and better deals for itself.

Aside from music and movies, Google also entered the home automation market with Android@Home that will enable developers to connect appliances, lighting and various home automation features to be controlled remotely through Android devices.

Special DLNA-type device-to-device wireless protocols designed by Google will allow appliances, and even light bulbs, to receive control signals from smartphones, tablets or PCs. The move shows how open Google is to developing new business where it can be the proponent instead of just a minor me-too player.

Google also unveiled the Android Open Accessory, an open-source API to let developers bring Android integration to exercise machines and other devices from any manufacturer who wants to create third-party accessories for smartphones and tablets.

This is very interesting since a successful accessory ecosystem for Android would be the first challenger to Apple's highly profitable but notoriously overpriced range of MFi (Made for iPhone) range of accessories. (Although RIM does have the Made for BlackBerry program as well.)

No other mobile OS competitor has as wide a range of accessories as Apple does for its iPhone and iPad, so Google will certainly attract a number of existing developers and manufacturers to create universal solutions for Android devices.

This could lead to future adoption of the Android OS in areas where it currently has no presence, such as the point-of-sale, medical diagnostics, or diagnostics markets.

Chromebooks

One of the biggest surprises at this year's Google I/O was the announcement of not one, but two Chromebook netbooks that are coming to market as early as June 15th. Made by Samsung and Acer, the Chromebooks boast quick startup and shut down times, 6-hour battery life, and built in security features.

Running the Chrome OS, which is a browser and cloud connected operating system, the Chromebooks cost around US$400, but are also available through an innovative Business and Education Program for $28 per user per month ($20 for educational customers).

For this subscription price, Google provides a Chromebook, hosts a Web-based device management service, and replaces broken or outdated hardware.

Chromebooks require constant Web access to really take advantage of all the features, since on board storage is limited. Applications run within the browser and are saved to the cloud, which makes it easy enough to access data and applications between machines. But what happens when there's no connectivity?

Google will bundle 100 MB of 3G data service with certain Chromebook models. But as anyone who uses mobile data will tell you, this is hardly enough to send a week's worth of e-mails with attachments, surf a variety of Websites, or watch those streaming YouTube movies.

It will be also be interesting to see if Chromebooks will take off in this age of tablets which, while slightly more expensive, offer similar functionality, but can also be used offline, have way more onboard storage, and offer similar or better battery life and functionality save for the presence of a physical keyboard.

Chromebooks are to be sold via Amazon.com and Best Buy in the U.S., and have also been slated for release in U.K, U.S., Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Canadian availability and cost was not revealed; but a representative from Acer has confirmed with Marketnews that there are no current plans to bring its model to Canada.

The challenge we see with Chromebooks, aside from the obvious competition from tablets, is that they still fall under the netbook category in terms of feature and functionality, and are expensive compared to the majority of netbooks in the market today. And netbook in and of themselves have been dwindling in popularity for some time now.

Those cheaper netbooks also run Windows 7, which has established productivity, communications and Internet apps that people in business and education are already used to using.

For Chromebooks or any cloud-connected browser-powered devices to really take off, prices have to come down and users need to have a compelling selection of applications that can work as well as established software from the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and others. This is much easier said than done.

Article Tags:  google, service, music, android, streaming, cloud, tablets, chromebooks, devices, smartphones, browser, movies, online, users, chromebook, market, event, mobile, range, company, similar, presence, youtube, business, developers, point, video, features, cle