[georgemcbay]

I have no idea what they may or may not be giving away at this years Google IO (they seem to be trying to reduce focus on that) but the retail cost of the free hardware often exceeds the registration amount.

2012 was probably the best overall in terms of retail price of giveways relative to registration fee: Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Asus Nexus 7, Nexus Q and Samsung Chromebox.

Last year was Chromebook Pixels which by themselves retail for more than $900.

[lnanek2]

Not to mention if you ebay it during the conference, as many people do, you often get several times the eventual retail price. Then just buy it cheap when it comes out.

[lighthazard]

$900 + travel expenses + hotel/quarters expenses

[bookwormAT]

or $0 for a trip around the world and a bag full of goodies. Many companies pay for business trips to tech conferences.

[saregama]

They say there is no free lunch. Wondering what the rationale behind freebies is ?

[georgemcbay]

The intent (on top of just basic "get our name out there" promotion) is to get devices into the hands of developers to make it more likely they will develop software for it. The sort of ultimate example of this (though obviously not as successful as hoped) is RIM basically giving PlayBooks away like candy to developers when it shipped. The thought being if developers have this device, they might be inspired to write software for it; or if developers have our specific Android device, they may give it special attention as a development/test target, which helps us.

In the case of Google IO though the freebies were such a good deal that many non-developers who are constantly looking to resell hot gadgets (the slickdeal-reading types who camp out at walmart before a new console release and try to buy 5 units so they can "flip" them on ebay) tend to come out of the woodwork when IO rolls around. This seems to contribute to the massive amount of registration interest Google IO gets relative to the size of the event (combined with the fact that all the talks are published in video form right after the conference) and the anecdotal rapid drop-off in attendees present at the conference from day to day.

[blisterpeanuts]

Interesting... and frustrating. Certainly where I work, any new handset or tablet will be used for testing our apps. Freebies are most welcome; there's a lot of red tape involved in purchasing a device just for testing/validating.

Maybe they could key the freebie devices to your Google I.D. and use a non-OEM plain plastic ziplock so that the flippers will have to manually wipe it and list it as "open box" on Ebay.

Anyway, I enjoy watching the keynotes and classes from the comfort of my home office. You can't beat the price.