Google I/O

SAN FRANCISCO - Patrick Brady, director of Android partner engineering, has two big launches to celebrate this month. The first is the birth of his daughter three weeks ago. And the second is the launch of his other baby -- the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

At the Goolge I/O developer conference here this week, Google took the wraps off its first ever Google-branded tablet made by Asus. The new 7-inch tablet called the Nexus 7 runs the latest version of the Google Android operating system Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It's loaded with some impressive specifications, including an more

SAN FRANCISCO--The second day of Google I/O was all about the Web as a platform, and the platform is going mobile.

Google announced the stable version of Chrome for Android (download) and, somewhat unexpectedly, Chrome for iOS. Despite both bearing the Chrome branding, they both betray the promise of Chrome -- in different ways.

Chrome for Android bears all the bells and whistles of its desktop counterparts. It's got Google's blazing V8 engine, JIT JavaScript rendering, and many of its modern-browsing features. Sync is finally smooth on Chrome, and minor flaws like the absent password sync are more

"It's Christmas in June," someone told me as we waited in the gadget line at the Google I/O conference on Wednesday. Every year at the conference, Google "gives" attendees hardware that runs Google software and services. This giveaway program isn't cheap for Google. But it is worth it.

Let's look at the numbers.

This year, the haul for attendees includes four pieces of Google hardware, with a total retail value of $1,176:

Google just wrapped up the second keynote in as many days at Google I/O 2012. Today's event was focused solely on Chrome and Apps and brought some great news to iOS users (how ironic) who are fans of Google's Drive and Chrome products.

Both Google Drive and Google Chrome are now officially available for iOS devices running iOS 4.3 and above.

Google brought its popular Incognito features to the iOS version of Chrome, along with many more features we won't go into here. Incognito mode, as we showed you on the Android version, allows you more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Adding offline editing abilities to Google Docs may sound like a modest, incremental change, but it's actually a major step ahead for the company's Web-based services.

And those services will take two more steps soon: Offline editing is coming to the Presentations and Spreadsheet apps, too.

"You'll see that coming out before long," Alan Warren, senior director for Google Docs and Drive, said in an interview at the Google I/O show here. Both of the apps will allow users to read and edit files offline, he added, with editing abilities coming "pretty close" more

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's online app market for Android apps, movies, music, and books is coming to Google TV, the company announced Thursday in a blog post from the Google I/O developer conference here.

Later this summer, Google said, it will make video content that can be purchased or rented through Google Play available to Google TV. On Wednesday the company announced it would be adding TV content to the lineup of content it now offers via Google Play.

Thursday's big headlines still have us basking in the Google gadget glow:

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he envisions consumers buying Google Glass by 2014, just a year after developers get to experiment with the version called Explorer Edition. Right now only bleeding-edge techies at the Google I/O conference get to preorder the augmented reality glasses for $1,500. But once those models ship next year, it wouldn't surprise me to see some being sold for high prices on eBay.

Already, someone from the conference is selling the attendee freebie Nexus 7 tablet on eBay, if you more

Google's latest sweet tooth obsession has been unveiled on the Google campus in the form of a giant jelly bean jar shaped like the Android mascot. It's a multicolored homage to the next rev of the Android OS -- version 4.1, Jelly Bean.

The sculpture didn't just download itself into place. It had a remarkable journey from conception as chunks of Styrofoam in New Jersey to its current spot among the pantheon of dessert-inspired Android operating system yard art.

The Jelly Bean sculpture was built by prop-building company Themendous over the course of one action-packed week during a heat wave that left workers covered in sweat as they churned out 160 individual beans to go into the Android-shaped jar.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google announced today at it's Google I/O conference here that Google documents is going offline.

The Google word-processing service is a Web-based alternative to programs such as Microsoft Word. Because Google Docs is a Web-based service, people who use the application have not been able to use it unless they more