Did Google announce anything useful at its I/O conference?

Google I/O is always like a little amateur dramatics show, but this year the company could have boasted about making Apple rely on its Gemini. It just totally failed to do so. Today the word "claptrap" is used to mean that someone is talking rubbish, but originally it was a theatrical term. It meant the bit in a show where the dancer or actor pauses in just such a way that the audience knows to applaud.<br>This year's Google I/O seemed to have quite a bit of the modern meaning of claptrap. But, painfully, it also lacked the original one as, over and over again, presenters paused for applause that just did not come.<br>Sometimes it was like there was a satellite delay between the stage and the audience sitting right in front of it. If you've ever presented on stage, you felt the agony of this one so often and so acutely.

And that's despite the fact that, presumably, the Google I/O audience in there were like the ones Apple lets in to WWDC. At the very least, they know this stuff, they use it, and they're more likely to be fans.<br>If you can't get your fans to applaud, you are never going to get everyone else to.<br>Google fans sound off<br>If you're in Google's PR department and have to produce a report about how great everyone thought this year's conference was, you actually have plenty of material. Across social media, there are countless examples of fans who thought what was announced is very promising.<br>But there seemed to be more of a backlash this time, too.<br>Did you know that if you don't mention AI every 3.7 seconds at Google I/O, security rushes in and escorts you off the stage? https://t.co/v37s9E2G3y#googleio #google pic.twitter.com/tA1Hry1gWP<br>— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) May 20, 2026

"Anyone else depressed after watching?" wrote a user on Reddit. "I can't put it into words as to why, but it makes me repulsed at technology even though a lot of what they presented is really impressive. I've always been an early adopter, but I feel so confused and lost."<br>Again, there were many who liked what Google says is coming later, but there was this negativity even amongst people who describe themselves as fans.<br>But then one striking element of this year's Google I/O is that it felt as if Google did not try to impress anyone outside its own sphere. Just as Apple's WWDC is, Google I/O is a developer conference, but Apple knows that developers are users too.<br>Plus Apple knows that its opening WWDC keynote is an opportunity to speak to regular users too. Google somehow expects the opposite, that people will just watch it anyway because AI is so good.<br>Imagine Apple's Craig Federighi or Phil Schiller present this as a great new feature - image credit: Google

So demonstrations showed command-line instructions, and constantly there were statistics to do with the number of AI tokens used. The numbers were in the quadrillions and CEO Sundar Pichai was very proud of them.<br>Yet these numbers are meaningless if you're a user, and possibly not a great deal more meaningful if you're a developer.<br>In the UK, the Royal Mail currently has an ad campaign where it boasts of how it has delivered something like one billion parcels. It is irresistible: you want to ask "out of how many?"<br>Similarly, when Pichai boasted that monthly AI token use has risen to around 480 trillion, you wanted to ask how many of those tokens were used by people saying "no, that response is wrong, do it again."<br>Putting on a show<br>Every year, Google puts out its I/O conference just ahead of Apple's WWDC, and that's unlikely to be a chance. This is where Google can show that it is better than Apple, or where if it's the same, Apple's later announcements will fall flat.<br>Both companies put on big shows. If now Apple prefers to pre-record its ones and Google likes a live presentation, Google went big with an open-air stage like the Glastonbury music festival, although if you blinked at the start and the end, you would entirely miss that.<br>Aside from one panning zoom at the start and another at the end, Google I/O played out as if it were in just another conference center. Apple never took its stage presentations outdoors, but now it obeys the obvious mandate of every production: if you have a great location, you show it.<br>It was genuinely head-jolting at the end as the camera pulled out of a dull conference stage to reveal this open-air venue - image credit: Google

Technically, structurally, and even dramatically, Apple's video presentations are as exceptionally well done as any business's conferences could be.<br>Google's in-person shows are shockingly amateur. Sundar Pichai has to look down to check that he's standing on his mark, for instance, rather than knowing it from rehearsals. And if you're the master of ceremonies, you really should stick around to the end.<br>Yet compared to Apple's old live presentations, Google's is frustratingly static. It's a live show in front of a live audience, but it pays vastly more...