Google Set to Unveil Tablet

By AMIR EFRATI

Google Inc. is expected this week to show off a tablet running its newest mobile software and a service for companies to rent computer servers to store data, according to people familiar with the matter.

The unveiling of various new devices and Web services is part of Google's annual software-developers conference, where the company hopes to win over mobile-app creators and device owners in a continuing battle with Apple Inc.

The three-day Google I/O event kicks off in San Francisco on Wednesday, a week after Microsoft Corp. announced it was adding its own tablet to the fray.

Google has said Chief Executive Larry Page won't attend the conference or appear on the company's analyst call in a few weeks because of an undisclosed condition, which caused him to lose his voice.

Mr. Page emailed employees last week to say there was "nothing seriously wrong with me," a person familiar with the matter has said.

More than 5,000 developers paid $900 to attend the Google event, which sold out in 20 minutes after tickets went on sale in late March.

Apple held its own developers' conference earlier this month where it showcased software features for its mobile phones and computers that put Google squarely in its cross hairs.

Chief among Google's concerns is its ability to compete in the tablet market, as tablets powered by its Android software so far have barely dented Apple's iPad dominance.

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., is expected this week to unveil a co-branded tablet made in partnership with device maker Asustek Computer Inc. that will be sold directly to consumers at Google's online store, now called Google Play. The device is expected to compete more directly with Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet, whose screen is seven inches in length and costs around $200.

The new tablet will run Google's newest version of Android, called Jelly Bean. Google is expected to unveil Jelly Bean at the conference this week and show off its new features. One of those features is a voice-activated "assistant," similar to Apple's Siri service on the iPhone, people familiar with the matter have said.

Google also is expected to announce that it will launch a service allowing other companies to rent computer servers to store data and power their websites and internally used business applications, an offering known as Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, people familiar with the matter said. That market is currently dominated by Amazon, with its Amazon Web Services that powers the systems of thousands of companies, including video site Netflix Inc. and consumer-goods giant Unilever NV .

Technology blog GigaOm earlier reported news of the IaaS offering.

Google's initiative, championed by senior vice president Urs Hölzle, is viewed internally as a defensive move against Amazon while capitalizing on Google's networks of data centers and custom-built servers worldwide, according to people familiar with the initiative.

Like Amazon, Google would be able to rent out the excess capacity of its network.

Ray Valdes, an Internet analyst at Gartner Inc., estimated Amazon is on pace to generate around $2 billion annually from Amazon Web Services, and that the market is growing by 30% a year. "It's a market Google needs to participate in because there's an overall shift by companies to change" from servers they manage on-site to "cloud computing," in which the servers are shared off-site, he said.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.

Google also is expected to announce that it will let developers create apps that could run on top of its Google+ social network, similar to the apps that run on top of Facebook Inc.'s network, said one of the people familiar with the matter. Google+ now allows only certain game apps on its network.

Another potential debut at the conference: a media-streaming device that Google previewed last year without mentioning it would sell the device to consumers.

Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported Google's Android unit was overseeing the manufacturing of a home-entertainment device marketed under the company's own brand. The device would stream music wirelessly to speakers throughout a person's home and might also be able to stream Web-based videos to TV screens. Google is expected to sell such a device through retailers and in its online store, people familiar with the matter have said.

According to a published Google I/O session list, Google also will announce that software developers can make their apps compatible with Google Wallet service, which lets people use their Android smartphones to pay for goods, redeem discounts and earn loyalty points at physical retailers.

Google has recently been working to change Google Wallet so that it can work even without the support of a wireless carrier, said people familiar with the matter, though it's unclear exactly how it would do so.

The new option for mobile apps to tap into Google Wallet was welcome news to Guy Goldstein, CEO of Pageonce Inc., a maker of a mobile app that lets people track their finances and pay bills.

He also said Android has significantly improved its mobile-app store, now called Google Play, over the past year, including a revamped search feature and providing more data to developers about the location of app's users and the type of phones they're using.

Android's recent announcement that it will let developers respond to customer reviews on Google Play is "a phenomenal idea," said Mr. Goldstein, who says his app has several million monthly active users—split roughly evenly between Android and Apple devices.

Unlike Apple, however, one nagging concern is that Android devices have many different screen sizes, so apps like Pageonce doesn't look good on 10% to 15% of devices, he said.

Write to Amir Efrati at amir.efrati@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared June 27, 2012, on page B2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Google to Unveil Tablet.