Inbound Thinking

Last week Google published the sessions for the upcoming I/O conference. There was a little buzz about one session in particular, “Developing extensions for Google Chrome.” Although it was really surprise to see it announced: Google has previously stated that there would be an extension API for Chrome eventually. But now we know that it will happen sooner than later, as the I/O Converence takes place at the end of May.

Another interesting session (to me anyway) is “Growing a SaaS-based services business with Google Apps.” I’m a big fan of the SAAS model and I hope it’s one that more entreprenuers are going to embrace. Of course Google is going to push their own agenda in this session but in reality the technology is interchangable, the important thing is convincing the thinkers and hackers to go down the SAAS road in the first place.

The session “Building a Business with Social Apps” seems a bit of an outlier. The description is:

Get some real world advice from developers that have created successful businesses around their social apps. From monetization strategies to analytics, learn how to turn a fun idea into a real revenue stream.

It doesn’t sound like this session really fits the Google agenda, but maybe they will be talking about using OpenSocial as the method of making your app social. Or maybe Google is just throwing developers a bone here and giving them interesting content without a sales pitch.

The last session that looks interesting to me is “Best practices for writing great, monetizable YouTube apps.” It would appear that Google is actually looking to make a platform play with YouTube. I know it’s already a platform of sorts, but this session shows that Google really wants to help developers get comfortable with the YouTube APIs and build more apps. I’ve been noticing the increased amount of advertising in YouTube videos so maybe Google has figured out the monetization model for their video darling and they’re ready to start piling on the traffic?