The ballroom on the third floor of San Francisco’s Moscone West convention center doesn’t look like special. But in recent years this nondescript hall has become the epicenter of major news about smartphones, tablets, and other cutting-edge mobile gizmos. Both Apple and Google use it for the keynote addresses that are the signature events at their developer conferences. As the two most significant companies in the mobile software business, they’re doing much of the heavy lifting of determining where the industry is going — and the rivalry between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android is as fierce as any tech face-off I can recall.
This week, it was Google’s turn to fill the room with geeks and attempt to dazzle them with its plans. The company’s I/O conference actually featured two keynotes; the first one, on Tuesday morning, packed its fifty-one minutes to the bursting point with Android-related developments.
