Reminds me of trying to get access to an old Hotline server. "The login is the eight word after 'summertime' on the last page of this link. Then, register for this service and the final word of the last paragraph of text is the password."
I think it had its intended goal; jabsters is exactly the kind of person I'd want at Google I/O (rather than someone just hoping for a discount on a new Nexus-whatever-they-give-away-this-time)
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's hard to disagree without sounding like sour grapes. Last year I navigated the gauntlet while this year I signed up for the lottery the evening that they opened registration and didn't get selected. Discussion about possibly buried and hidden codes didn't surface until a couple of days after I'd already signed up.
Normally I love puzzles like this, but how many tickets could they have possibly given away with these codes? Compared with the total number of attendees, these were just a drop in the bucket. The overwhelming majority are simply going to be lottery winners. I fail to see how that is an improvement.
No, I realize that. I even spent a little time participating. I'm not sure I could have changed my registration after the fact and ultimately didn't find anything new. Since I was already registered in the lottery, I didn't spend a lot of additional time hunting.
So while I do think the scavenger hunt is very Googleish, I still don't think the overwhelming majority of attendees will have gotten passes as a result, so I don't think this game really does much to tilt the needle. Most of the attendees will have fronted their $300 or $900 and will have been selected at random instead of by merit.
I'm still looking forward to the event but I can't help but be disappointed by the result and I'm not sure this particular selection process will have generated the best pool of attendees. Demand simply exceeds supply, and no matter what selection criteria have been used, someone more deserving will be left out. I don't necessarily qualify that by suggesting that I'm more deserving, just that this process accentuates it.
Ultimately it is Google's event to run and there is something to be said about providing an equal chance to everyone, but there are tradeoffs with this approach.
Wow, Hotline FTW. I remember it well. It still exists, actually, with some old Mac OS servers out there, still. Problem is, the transfer protocol tops out at something like 50kb/ps or something that's fairly silly today, so it's not that great for modern large file transfers...
As someone who used to dabble in Hotline servers, you could make enough bank to pay for your internet with those "find this word" directions. Most people would do it if they really wanted the stuff on the server, or they could pay, or they could upload. Really, it became a self-sustaining system.
Either way, off-putting.