The Google I/O Agenda Shows No Love for Google+

Image: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Google's annual invite-only developer conference, Google I/O, kicks off on Wednesday with a total of 80 sessions on the agenda.

None of those sessions, however, focus on a service that hundreds of millions of people use: Google+.

Google's social network, which it often pushes aggressively upon its users, is mysteriously absent from this year's I/O agenda. Last year, there was an entire two-day track at the conference dedicated to Google+, including 15 sessions related to Google+.

When asked about the omission, a Google spokesperson said there are fewer sessions this year, and that Google+ didn't fit as well into I/O's three main themes: design, develop and distribute.

'To that end, our content and sessions aren't necessarily focused around specific products (G+ versus Android versus Chrome) but more generally about how Google can help you as a developer enrich the experience for your users and grow your audience, with tools at every step of the development process,' a spokesperson wrote in an email to Mashable. 'Google+ is of course an important component to that, you can see it in topics like identity (Google+ sign-in) and our gaming platform, like Google Play game services.'

Both Android and Chrome do have multiple dedicated sessions on the agenda this year.

Industry analyst Brian Blau of Gartner, who is attending I/O this week, said he, too, noticed a lack of Google+ content on the agenda. Instead, it appears Google is focusing on user interfaces, he says.

But that doesn't mean the Google+ omission should be ignored.

'I just don't think that social is a big focus for [Google] right now,' Blau wrote in an email. 'The overall value of a social stream is going down over time and is becoming a feature [versus] a pillar.'

It's been a bit of a rough run for Google+ in the past few months. In April, longtime Google+ head Vic Gundotra left the company. Then Google cofounder Sergey Brin joked that he shouldn't have been involved in Google+ at all as he is 'not a very social person.' Numerous publications picked up the comment, and some went on to vilify Brin for a handful of Google+ problems, including issues about true identity.

Google+ has more than 300 million users, so it's not as if the service is going to disappear. On the other hand, ignoring it completely at I/O - if that is indeed what happens - won't leave anyone thoroughly convinced of Google's commitment to social.

Google I/O starts Wednesday with a keynote address at 9 a.m. PT in San Francisco. Those who can't attend can watch the live stream of the conference here.

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