Comment by roydivision

Google develop products for three reasons : a) To maintain (and hopefully increase) ad revenue, their cash cow. b) To attempt to diversify from this single source of income. Except this will never happen, nothing will ever come close to the income ads generate for them. They know this, but they have to look like they’re trying, both internally and externally. c) To create a false sense with the masses that they are a cutting edge technology company, to maintain the Google brand and thus keep people using Search. This includes things like Google Glass, silly natural language toys, self driving cars, etc. None of these things are even intended for mass production / consumption. Google IO is merely a showcase for these technology throw-aways, nothing more.