Vic Gundotra's absence couldn't have been more conspicuous. That guy was a great presenter and a showman. Also, was it just me or did the keynote feel really long? I don't think it was a good idea for them to change the one-keynote-per-day format, especially when they didn't have stuff like new moonshot announcements or q&a time with the ceo to make it more engaging and interesting. Sundar was perfect for the second day keynotes about chrome and web. I don't think he is a good replacement for Vic for keynotes. The whole keynote felt a bit stale. The protests livened up the keynote more than the presenters did.
The lack of any mention of Google+ was absolutely deafening. If we needed any more confirmation that it's been dismantled within Google I think this would be it. Interesting though that nothing was mentioned to take its place or give us any hint about the future. At very least, they need an identity service of some kind to power the other platforms.
Gundotra was a great showman. When he announced Hangouts and the replacement for Talk, I was excited and interested! With his clever skills, he managed to conceal the fact that it was a piece of junk that did away with the most useful features of Google Talk, and so I have never upgraded Talk.
Clever showman.
EDIT: Why the downvotes? Gundotra was a good showman. Hangouts also removed features from Talk, eg. is someone actually online when I want to talk to them. Was this wrong? Or was someone angry about these facts?
You bet somebody got angry. There are all sorts of fanboys who start foaming at the mouth as soon as they see a perceived slight of their sacred cow. For some reason, these tend to be the same sort of people who accumulate scores high enough to be able to downvote on HN.
Haha, thanks. I do not yet have scores high enough to be able to downvote, but I wonder if that's because I keep saying things that people downvote? Very Joseph Heller.
I dunno if they really did have nothing interesting. The part that is intriguing is the fact that they repeated over and over again that this was the biggest overhaul of android yet, while being very unenthusiastic about it.
I think this might be because they've either changed strategic direction or are awaiting an overhaul of senior management, what with the Nest acquisition and Vic and Hugo's departures and all. I think the stuff that they had to announce today was simply a lagging indicator of their current direction.
I wonder why neither Page nor Brin came on stage.