Learnings from Google I/O Connect Berlin
This month, Google hosted the first of its follow-up series of events for their annual Google I/O conference. In this post, Ed Holloway-George highlights what he learned at the I/O Connect event held in Berlin, Germany.
As an Android developer and self-proclaimed tech nerd, the Google I/O conference is one of the dates I always look forward to on my calendar each year.
Held at the impressive Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, it’s usually Google’s primary showcase of all the exciting announcements they have to share across their software, hardware and other digital products. In years gone by, we’ve seen major announcements including the launch of Google Assistant, Google Home, numerous Android versions and of course, the ill-fated and slightly ahead of its time, Google Glass.
However, this year’s edition held on May 14th had from the offset a very specific focus — AI. As the hottest topic in tech right now, it comes as no surprise that Google is also going all-in with its AI offerings this time around. In fact, so much so, that “AI” was mentioned at least 120 times during the main keynote presentation 😅 That aside, there were also many other announcements in the mobile, cloud and web spaces for developers and consumers to look forward to. If you missed any of these yourself, you should check out the official site and catch up 👀
Whilst the main conference was primarily focused on announcements, Google also has several smaller developer-focused follow-up events known as I/O Connect. The idea behind I/O Connect events is to get the new technologies announced at the main conference in the hands of developers, have Google employees (Googlers) readily available to take questions as well as present additional content and of course, for developers from across the world to meet up and share a common passion for Google’s tech.
Being a Google Developer Expert for Android, I was fortunate enough to be invited to this year’s European instalment of I/O Connect, held in a swelteringly hot Berlin 🤒
So, to completely misquote the Ramones, “I/O let’s go!”…
What I learned at I/O Connect 24
In my experience, there’s no such thing as a dull Google event. I/O Connect this year comes as no exception with an indoor artificial river installation being the centrepiece of the event’s location within a converted warehouse complex. With multiple auditoriums, workshop spaces and free barista-made coffee, the stage was already set for a great developer event.
But what did we learn? There were some amazing announcements, but here’s a summary of some of my personal key takeaways!
- Google’s investment in AI is scaling up
Google used I/O Connect’s keynote to announce their latest “Gemma 2” suite of models. The newly available models boast the ability to support either 9 billion or 27 billion parameters and have performance metrics that surpass known industry leaders such as the popular Llama-3 offering from Meta. The rapid release of Google’s AI products and the mind-boggling numbers associated with them is a testament to how much effort they are focusing on this area and it continues to be at the forefront of developer’s minds.
A live demo of Google’s Gemini AI being used in developer tooling to aid the investigation of a bug in software was incredibly popular with the Keynote’s crowd and despite another AI live demo going a bit wrong, the sentiment with most is that AI is not just something to benefit end-users but something that can be used at all stages of software development.
Like many tech-centric companies, we are no strangers to AI’s benefits as we’ve previously blogged about a real-world application of AI/ML used here at ASOS and also our process of looking into new ways to use Gen AI through hackathons. Google’s recent announcements have all but reinforced our belief that the future is AI ✨
- Kotlin Multiplatform continues to thrive
Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) are the words on many mobile developer’s lips right now. The ability to effectively share code between iOS, Android, Desktop and Web sounds almost too good to be true, but the KMP model is one that is growing in popularity and shows no signs of slowing down its adoption at scale.
Google recently announced a series of changes to some of their core Android ‘Jetpack’ libraries that allows their popular libraries such as ViewModel, Paging and Room to now be used in a KMP context. I/O Connect was an opportunity to revisit these announcements, see them in action and have a discussion with Googlers about their future plans for KMP support. As it was made clear in their presentations, Google is now fully endorsing ‘KMP for shared business logic between Android & iOS’ which is an exciting prospect for many mobile developers.
I am pleased to reveal that our mobile teams at ASOS have recently been exploring KMP for shared business logic between our iOS and Android apps and have been actively trialling the use of shared ASOS KMP libraries in our most recent Android release (with iOS coming very soon). If you’d like to find out more about how this went, our approach and results, then perhaps keep an eye out for a future blog post! 👀
- Performance in mobile is still key
Another key area of focus within Google’s Android ecosystem right now is that of app performance. I/O Connect was no exception with hands-on workshops and tech-talks focussing on performance libraries such as Baseline Profiles and Macrobenchmarks.
This was an awesome opportunity to chat, raise any issues and pair program directly with the Googlers involved in these libraries and had great feedback from all involved. Sadly, a conflict with another event commitment meant I wasn’t able to attend directly — but I am told it was incredibly useful!
App performance is something we are always looking to improve at ASOS and I am pleased to say we have a roadmap to introduce these libraries into the Android app in the very near future. Watch out Usain Bolt, we are coming for your speed record 🏃♂️💨
- The wider tech community continues to be impressive
With over 100 countries represented from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Google’s I/O Connect event embodied the very best of the tech community and brought together people who all share a common passion; To make the world a better place through technology.
ASOS is one of many companies that actively work with cutting-edge technologies, such as those announced at I/O, to deliver better results and experiences to our customers. We’ll continue to keep on top of the rapidly changing tech landscape and we are all excited to share more about our advancements in these areas in future posts!
In closing, I hope you found this insightful and join me in looking forward to seeing what else comes from the remaining I/O Connect events in Bengaluru — India and Beijing — China later this summer.
I hope to catch you at next year’s events wherever they might be! 🗺️
Hi, I am Ed Holloway-George an Android Lead here at ASOS and Google Developer Expert for Android. I joined the company in 2021 and when I’m not sweating buckets at developer events abroad, I can be found talking about Mobile Security or tweeting pictures of my dog 🐶
