Google I/O tickets have been bid up to more than $2,000 on eBay, four times the face value. But it's no surprise, perhaps: The highly anticipated Google I/O developer conference sold out in a mere 59 minutes earlier this month, whereas last year's conference took 50 days to sell out.
IN PICTURES: Visiting the Googleplex
Google charged $450 for tickets, plus $100 for an optional boot camp. Academic tickets for students and faculty were just $150 for the conference, which will be held May 10-11 in San Francisco.
While tickets are plentiful on eBay, it'll cost you. One ticket was up to $2,025 after 27 bids, with more than a day left in the auction (shipping was free, though). One ticket was up to $1,362 after 22 bids, with four days remaining. The starting bid for another ticket was $1,250, while others had "Buy It Now" prices of $2,500.
One academic ticket was bid up to a mere $585, but still had three days left in the auction.
The annual Google I/O began in 2008, offering big news announcements and in-depth looks at technologies such as Android, Chrome and Google App Engine. About 5,500 people are expected to attend this year.
We can expect a major focus on Android at this year's event, as Google's open-source operating system has become the best-selling smartphone OS and is poised to take the tablet world by storm. Although Apple has owned the market so far with the iPad, but numerous hardware vendors showed off Android-based tablets at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Google, meanwhile, just this week made the full SDK for tablet-optimized Android 3.0 available to developers.
Google will stream keynotes live on the Web both days during Google I/O. Most other sessions will be recorded and made available online in June. Technologies to be covered include Native Client, Google Storage for Developers, Google Web Toolkit, Eclipse, Google TV, the Chrome Web Store, HTML5, OpenID and OAuth, the Google Apps Marketplace, and of course, Android. One session will show developers how to create Android applications for Google TV.
We may also learn more about the fate of Chrome OS, Google's browser-based operating system that has taken a backseat to Android so far in 2011.
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