The I/O event this year marks the 10th anniversary of the event. Have you ever asked what does Google I/O mean and how did you get that name?
In a blog post, Google gives two possible explanations behind the name. The first is that the name means "input/output",
which refers to the computational concept of the interface between a computer system and the outside world.
The other interpretation you'll see is that I/O stands for "Innovation in the Open," which meshes well with the phenomenon.
Google says in the blog post that both origins are true, but there is more to the story.
Digging deeper, the company says that it held its first developer conference, Geo Developer Day, in May 2006.
"The first 'I/O' wasn't called I/O at all in 2007," says Lorin Plato, Director of Events and Experience Operations and one of the original I/O event organizers.
"It was an event called Google Developers Day, which we hosted at the San Jose Convention Center with 1,000 tickets for developers."
The event centered around Google's first publicly available developer tool, the Google Maps API, which was launched the previous year.
"Flash forward a year and our suite of developer tools has expanded significantly - and we needed a bigger event to represent our products and connect with our growing developer community.
Thus, I/O was born." happened," the blog post further stated. In 2008, the event moved to a larger venue – San Francisco's Moscone Center West – and with the move,
it received its official name. Originally, the name I/O was actually based on something numerical: a googol, the number of the same name that gives our company its name.