4 Unanswered Questions From Today’s Google i/o Keynote

The keynote for this year’s Google i/o developer conference just ended, with the major announcements being Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), the Nexus 7 tablet, the Nexus Q home media device, and a skydiving first demo of Google’s up until now, mostly-hushed Project Glass.

There was a fair amount of interesting – if not completely surprising – news (biggest surprise was probably offline voice typing, which seems like a great feature) during the keynote, but I was still left with a few pressing questions that I felt were not addressed.

1. Where is the full read/write API for Google+?

How can Google possibly advance the adoption of Google+ (which it says has 150M monthly users) if it still doesn’t have a full read/write API after being in existence for a whole year? Many people – myself included – had assumed that Google would roll out a ton of APIs for Google+ soon after it launched, but one year in – and at the logical stage for finally announcing it – Google still hasn’t given developers the tools to build Google+ into their apps. Tomorrow is the actual first year anniversary, so perhaps Google will make the API available then?

2. Is it going to be possible to share augmented reality experiences between Project Glass users?

While the skydiving demo of Project Glass was certainly audacious, I was personally underwhelmed by the tech on display (which could have been accomplished with helmet-mounted webcam frankly). I was hoping to see some augmented reality superimposed over the images we were seeing from the glasses, but that either isn’t part of the tech at this point or is not something that can be broadcast beyond the glasses. Either way, the demo didn’t even come close to realizing the mockup video that Google released earlier this year for Project Glass (and yes, I know it was a futuristic vision, but there wasn’t any augmented reality on display today).

3. Why doesn’t the Nexus 7 tablet have two cameras?

I’m not the first to bring this up, but I just have to ask again what Google’s motivation is with this one? Price? Usage? Just seems like something a major misstep to me.

4. Does the Nexus Q let you mirror your device’s display?

The Nexus Q more or less acts like a Apple’s AirPlay with one seemingly glaring exception – I haven’t seen anyone say that you can mirror your device through the Nexus Q onto another screen. Perhaps they just didn’t cover it or that is just a developer app away, but that would seem like a no-brainer to me.

Ok, so those were my immediate questions following the keynote – hopefully some attendees at Google i/o will bring up these questions with the Google folk.