[Samuel_Michon]

"I'm pretty sure this outcome is exactly what Google wants. [...] Why else would they continue to give away such great swag at an event with such high demand?"

I agree. Giving away equipment worth more than the ticket price doesn't attract the right crowd.

Apple has similar problems (lots of devs who want to come, but not enough space or manpower) but it at least seems to put in an effort to filter out the developers who don't need access to Apple engineers. It doesn't give away equipment, ticket price was raised to $1600, tickets are personalized and are non-transferrable, and the presentations are put online for free soon after WWDC ends. Despite all that, last year's WWDC was sold out in under 2 hours.

[objclxt]

> Despite all that, last year WWDC was sold out in under 2 hours.

...and I'm willing to bet that if Apple announced the time WWDC tickets went on sale in advance, as Google do, it would sell out a lot faster.

[Samuel_Michon]

I doubt it. Just as with I/O, the ordering system is the bottleneck. If the systems could manage it, both events would sell out in mere minutes.

Recap of WWDC 2012 ticket sales: for the first time, Apple didn't pre-announce the WWDC dates or when ticket sales would start. People were quite upset because it was so sudden and because it was so early in the day – sales began at 8:30AM EST. Per John Gruber, on the day: "Sold out in two hours, before the U.S. west coast even woke up." http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/04/25/wwdc-2012