Google Launches Easily Embeddable Web Elements at I/O 2009

Posted by Alan Vo on Thursday, May 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The only really exciting thing you missed by not attending Google’s I/O 2009 developer event was the chance to get a free Android phone–apparently Google can give them away after all!

The annual event is not as glamorous as Google’s other conferences, but if you dream in binary, then the chance to mingle with 3,000 other developers and listen to 130+ speakers would have been a delight for you.

For the rest of us, Google did make three announcements today.

Perhaps the most interesting for us non-developer types, Google Web Elements allow you to incorporate Google products–like Maps, News, Friend Connect and YouTube–right onto your own website. They require no programming knowledge; all you need to do is use the customization wizard and Google automatically generates a snippet of text to paste on your page.

It works like this:

And looks like this:

The other two announcements may cause drowsiness…

Java Language Support in App Engine: Today Google is launching general availability of Java language support in Google App Engine, providing all developers with an end-to-end Java language solution for building AJAX web applications.
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.