Yesterday's keynote featured announcements about Android, Google Music, and Google movie-rentals, as well as news about extending the developer platform to include hardware via Google's Open Accessory API and Accessory Developer Kit.

What we didn't hear about was anything relating to Google's Chrome OS, and we're anticipating that will be the focus of today's keynote. Rumors are that Google will announce a $20/month Chrome notebook rental program aimed at students, but we're sure Google has more for us in store.

9:30 a.m.: Vic Gundotra takes the stage to welcome us to the second day of Google IO. He says that over 600,000 people tuned in yesterday to watch the keynote - "global enthusiasm."

9:32 a.m.: It's about the "open Web," says Gundotra as he introduces Sundar Pichai, Chrome's Senior VP

9:34 a.m.: There are now 160,000,000 active users - more than doubling since last year. Pichai chronicles what has happened over the last year with Chrome, adding a stable channel for Mac and Linux and rolling out releases every six weeks. This culminated this last week with the latest beta release of Chrome 12

9:36 a.m.: Pichai talks about the upcoming APIs in Chrome, and brings Ian Ellison-Taylor to the stage to talk about these new features:

• Speech support
• Translation
• Javascript speed

9:43 a.m.: What's next? GPU acceleration for the canvas and WebGL. The demo utilizes the famous aquarium from Microsoft which now can be filled with hundreds of fish without losing frame-rates.

9:48 a.m.: Emphasis is on speed. But "writing these applications only matter if you can reach users." Hence the launch of the Chrome Web store. Users are spending more time in the apps - about a 2x increase. And game developers are also seeing about 2.5x increase in transactions.

9:49 a.m.: As of today, Chrome Web Store opens to all users, in 41 different languages. Although this will open up usage, the challenge of monetization still exists. Vikas Gupta from the Google Payments team now joins the stage to discuss in-app payments.

9:51 a.m.: Graphic.ly demoed as an example. Graphic.ly wanted users to be able to read a comic before they actually make a purchase - something that's now possible with the API. Gupta demonstrates that it only takes a single line of code to be able to add this.

9:53 a.m.: Gupta stresses keeping it simple for developers to monetize things. This new Payments platform is priced at a flat fee of 5% - that means 95% of what customers spend in an app stay with the developer.

9:55 a.m.: Gaming capabilities on the Web: Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka from talks about the challenges and now the ability to bring Angry Birds to the Web. Angry Birds will now be on "the biggest platform that's out there" - the Web. "It's a very smooth, very nice Angry Birds experience," says Vesterbacka, who says this version of the game is built using WebGL. The Web version will use local storage so that you can play the complete game offline. There will also be exclusive levels for Chrome users, as well as "The Mighty Eagle" that users will be able to buy to help them clear levels. "Let's pop some pigs!" - in other words, the game is available in the Chrome store now.

10:04 a.m.: Aaron Koblin from the Google Creative Lab team announces Three Dreams of Black, showcasing the power of javascript and WebGL. (This is the team that did the Wilderness Downtown music experience last year.) "Painting with geometry." This project is open source, and there are a number of demoes and model viewers available showing how the team built the various pieces in the video. Keep your eyes out at ro.me

10:09 a.m.: People spend all their time on the Web, within a browser, "which was why we developed Chrome OS," says Pichai. "We wanted to rethink the entire experience and distill it down to nothing but the Web." Google says it's focusing on notebooks because that's where users are - Chromebooks.

10:10 a.m.: What's different about Chromebooks?

• Instant on
• Always connected
• All-day battery
• Access your stuff anywhere
• Gets better over time
• Security built in

10:13 a.m.: Cr-48 Pilot program has had over 1 million applicants. Pichai talks about the improvements on the devices: better support for Flash, for external devices. Kan Liu takes the stage to talk about Chrome OS's new file support functionalities - file attachments, music and video files, photos. New file extension APIs are built into the platform so that users will be able to have their files transferred easily to the cloud, no matter which apps they're using (such as Box.net)

10:23 a.m.: Addressing important use-cases for Chromebooks, such as using them offline. Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs will be available offline for users this summer.

10:24 a.m.: Showcasing various Chromebooks: from Samsung and Acer. There will be priced between $300-$500. They'll be available to order June 15 via a.m.azon and BestBuy in the U.S. Full jailbreaking capabilities.

10:27 a.m.: Businesses and schools: IT infrastructure complicated. Upgrades are costly. Emphasis on laptops, not desktops - which can bring security challenges when devices move in and out of firewall. But companies are moving to the cloud, says Pichai. Google has partnered with Citrix and VMware for virtualization. According to a Google survey, companies said that with the combination of virtualization and Web apps, they can move 75% of their users to Chromebooks.

10:32 a.m.: Working to develop a Web-based console from which IT administrators can manage users' apps and policies. Software and hardware packaged together - Chromebooks for Business that will be $28 per user per month. "Software and hardware as a service."

10:33 a.m.: School usage: "We want to make it possible for every student to have a computer." $20 per user per month for schools. These will be available, like consumers, starting June 15.

10:37 a.m.: Every Google IO attendee will get a Chromebook. (Do you hate me for live-blogging that? Sorry)

The Web is what you make of it

Today at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced the opening up and general availability of the Google Places API.

The API, which has been in a closed beta testing and only available for a select number of companies for the past year, gives developers access to Google's database of restaurants, bars, hotels and various other points of interest.

The Places API was first introduced at Google I/O last year and has been in use by a number of companies, including location-based app SCVNGR. Over the past year, the company has tested the service and added a number of new features:

• A globally consistent type scheme for Places, spanning more than 100 types such as bar, restaurant, and lodging
• Name and type based query support
• A significantly simpler key based authentication scheme
• Global coverage across every country covered by Google Maps
• Google APIs Console integration, which provides group ownership of projects, key management, and usage monitoring
• Instant reflection of new Places submitted by an app in subsequent searches made by that app, with new Places shared with all apps after moderation
• Real time reranking of search results based on current check-in activity, so that Places that are currently popular are automatically ranked higher in searches by your app

Also included in the newly released API is an autocomplete service, much as users have become used to seeing when searching on Google. The service predicts place results as a user types, meaning that if they are looking for a familiar bar and know the name, they may only need to type a few letters before seeing the result, which can be ultimately helpful on a mobile device.

We asked Mitchell if the API would quickly connect developers to other Google data, such as open hours or Street View imagery and he said that it isn't quite there yet, but it is certainly going in that direction.

For developers and interested parties attending Google I/O, there is a session - "Building Location Based apps using Google APIs" - at 3pm on Wednesday, in which Marcelo Camelo will provide more detail.

When we talked to the Wave team yesterday, the project's co-founder Lars Rasmussen noted that since the launch of the invite-only beta, group collaboration in businesses, education, news organizations and at conferences has emerged as the sweet spot for Wave. That will be the use-case that the Wave team plans to highlight during the general launch and in the next few weeks.

Why did Google decide to open up Wave now? According to the Wave team, the service is now stable and fast enough for a mainstream audience (crashes were a very common sight in the early days). During the invite-only testing period, the team added numerous new features that its early users requested. These include email notifications of updated waves and access controls for waves, as well as making it easier for users to reply and edit waves and find unread material in a wave. The team also introduced templates that make getting started easier for new users.

Updates for Developers

Besides opening up sign-ups for Wave, the team announced a number of developer features at I/O today. The next version of the Robots API, for example, will not only untie Wave robots from Google's App Engine, but also allow developers to create "active" robots that can generate waves and update them. Google is launching improvements to the Embed API, including the ability to give readers anonymous access to waves.

Maybe the most exciting update is that Google is releasing a new Data API that will allow developers to create lightweight Wave clients. For now, as Rasmussen noted in our interview, developers won't be able to create full-fledged Wave clients yet, but the team has started to define a client and server protocol that will soon make it a possibility.

In order to help developers create their own applications on top of the Wave APIs and bootstrap the Wave developer community, the team is open-sourcing the real-time Wave rich text editor.

The Wave team has also made progress in getting companies like Novell and projects like PyGoWave, Ruby on Sails and QWave to support the wave federation protocol. The latest company to sign on to this project is SAP, which will use Wave in its StreamWork product.

Join Our Discussion on Wave

Recently I spoke with Tom Stocky, a Director of Product Management at Google, to discuss Google's sudden interest in web developers.

Stocky told me that we're at an "inflection point for web app development" and that Google is all about "driving usage of the Internet". He said that the Web is now the defacto platform for application development.

To follow up on that, I asked whether the browser is still the key platform for Google. He replied that the main client for web open standards such as HTML, CSS, Javascript etc is the browser - therefore Google continues to support the browser.

But more than that, Google intends to make that client (the browser) more powerful. They also want to make the cloud (the Internet) more accessible.

Furthermore, Stocky sees the browser as being a key part of the Mobile Web going forward.

Google and RIAs

I asked what Google thinks of RIA (rich internet applications) that are run outside the browser. In particular I mentioned that Microsoft and Adobe are both pushing apps outside the browser, using their RIA platforms. Stocky replied that typically companies sell the underlying proprietary platform and then try to get developers to build on top of that (he didn't specifically mention them, but he's obviously referring to MS and Adobe). However, he said, Google's mission is to build on top of the open web platform.

Stocky said that Google not only aims to build on the open Web platform, but actively improve it. He referred to recent Google releases like Google App Engine (a developer tool that enables you to run your web applications on Google's infrastructure) and Google Gears (a browser plug-in which enables people to use web apps while offline).

Why the Sudden Interest in Developers?

I asked Stocky why has Google decided that now is the right time to get web developers behind them? I didn't mention it, but I'm sure it's no coincidence that Google's outreach to developers has happened at about the same time that tech blogs like ReadWriteWeb have gotten access to Google PR and product teams. In other words, up till this year developers and bloggers alike have been subject to a Steve Jobs-like veil of secrecy over the inner workings of Google.

Stocky told me that it's been an evolutionary thing. 2-3 years ago, he said, Google had just a couple of APIs. So there wasn't much to engage developers with at that time. Now in 2008 they have 40+ APIs and Google has "realised the benefits of investing in the open web platform". He also admitted that one of those benefits is that it enhances Google's revenue.

So web developers (and bloggers) are getting a more open, remixable Google in 2008. That's great to see - and we can only wish that a certain Cupertino-based company follows that precedent!

Web Developers, Web Developers, Web Developers!

I did my best to entice a Steve Ballmer-like chant of "Web Developers, Web Developers, Web Developers" out of Tom Stocky, but the best he would give me was: "Google is native to the Web" :-)

What do you think of the new open(ish) Google? And let us know in the comments if you're attending Google I/O and if so what do you expect to get out of it.

Related: ReadWriteTalk did a podcast with Tom Stocky in April.