Solving a 2014 Google I/O Secret Invite Puzzle | Hacker News Reader

Solving a 2014 Google I/O Secret Invite Puzzle

blakecaldwell.net

57 pointsblakecaldwell15 comments

>I'd try to find and solve one of the secret puzzles Google was hiding, to get a chance to buy a reserved ticket.

I find it amusing that giving money to Google is almost spoken in terms of privilege. "Today, Google will allow users to buy Google Glass for $1500" or in this case, solving a puzzle for the opportunity to buy a $900 ticket outside of the if-you-win-you-pay lottery.

More amusing is that I/O is a conference of how to use Google services and platforms[0]. Really, look at it. It's almost entirely talks on how to build products for their platforms and pay-to-use APIs.

[0] https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions

The point you make is valid, but not unique to Google or its products. People yearned for WWDC tickets (a conference about how to use Apple services and platforms) and stand in line for the privilege of getting the latest and greatest Apple product.

You might say that it's a sign of success in the tech world when your brand builds this much of a following.

More amusing is that I/O is a conference of how to use Google services and platforms[0]. Really, look at it. It's almost entirely talks on how to build products for their p platforms and pay-to-use APIs.

Presumably the developers still get their money's worth. If /when they don't soon or later these conferences will be full of empty chairs. So the question each person asks: "what do I gain by it," not what Google gains by it.

The developers who manage to successfully get a ticket through the lottery*.

Why are the two coupled anyway? That's a huge issue with the WWDC and it's becoming an issue here. If you want developers, don't offer "the next big thing" in consumer electronics to anyone who attends, then leave registration open for everyone.

There is also a lot of content at I/O that's generally applicable to developing for the web- when I was there in 2012 most of the sessions I attended were on doing cool things with HTML5 and modern JS libraries. There's also a lot on Go, Dart, and general development practices.

These scavenger hunts aren't merit based reserved tickets. What do they actually do? Who are the targets, and why does Google want these people to attend I/O?

The answer can't be "developers" or "to learn things." Not while the prevailing reason people attend I/O is to get the new shiny toys and the primary means for getting a ticket is a random lottery with no prerequisites for entry and no fee to prevent gaming. What we need for learning is mostly put on YouTube promptly, so presence is not necessary there, either.

I don't understand it at all.

Thanks for the constructive insight.

I'm glad we collectively understand the general purpose of downvotes. There's a reason they aren't defaulted to 0 pointers; they aren't "agree/disagree".

Go back to slashdot where inept moderation is the norm.

There is an URL to the game posted directly on a Google website, which I only recognised as such after reading the post.

https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/push-to-deploy

The second image from the bottom has an URL plastered on it. When I noticed, I wondered how that happened. I tried the URL in incognito tab but it requested permission to identify my Google account, so I thought it's for internal Google use only, and closed the tab.

Nice find.

On a side note I couldn't find the I/O with different colors from Australia, no matter how much I refresh the page.

Location based maybe?

It's telling that Google still pretends to be a company where technology and geek cred matters. Despite being in reality a fast follower whose revenues come almost entirely from selling the details of those who fall for what they offer, they hold onto the least-cautious "hackers" (term used very loosely) with references to text adventures and towels. Oh well.

Fast following means that rather than developing something out of whole cloth, you simply copy the functionality of another product exactly, i.e. literally steal the R&D, (including screen layout and exact behavior) while changing just the art assets enough to remain a hair on the right side of the law. In order to fast follow, Google would have to fast follow something, copying it down to the layout and exact functionality. What do you think Google is copying?

Also initiatives like Google Glass are certainly not copying another product, but are among the most ambitious consumer R&D projects of any company on Earth. It is a category of product that does not exist.

That's simple equivocation - you think you can redefine "fast follower" so narrowly? It would certainly be convenient to ignore the similarities of Android and Google+ to their predecessors, but it wouldn't be particularly honest.

I'm not redefining the word, you are. "Fast follower" is defined very narrowly. (Go ahead and look it up.) Here is how we use it https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/fast%20foll... and https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/prefix/0/fast%20fo...

and see Google.

Just like if you were to accuse them of "trademark infringement" or "copyright infringement".

It's just not a very broad word, it's quite specific, and you shouldn't use it. You can call them derivative or unoriginal, for example, or describe what you think they're doing. But you can't call Google+ a "trademark infringement" of Facebook, for example, because they don't use the word Facebook, and you can't call it a "fast following" either, because it's not close enough.

Google Search wasn't "fast following" Yahoo web search, and Gmail wasn't "fast following" Yahoo Mail (another web mail), and Google maps weren't "fast following" mapquest or whatever people were using, and Google+ isn't "fast following" Facebook.

Not because they aren't in the same space, or taking cues. But because of the meaning of fast following, which is extremely specific. (Almost like feature and layout matching.)

You see how it works? Look up trademark, copyright, and fast following - then you will see that you really can't use these particular words of Google. You can use other words of course.

I will give you an exception. I think shortly after the iPhone came out, Samsung literally had a strategy of fast following it. (Immorally.) http://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit-inter...

This is the meaning of "fast follow". You can look it up. Other companies that had a close follow strategy have been Zynga:

http://nibletz.com/2012/01/31/fast-follow-the-game-zynga-lik...

You see? This is how the whole word is defined. Nobody, but nobody, accuses Google of using this strategy. They're just not doing it, just like they're not committing trademark infringement.

it's a very real strategy that is very shitty. I'm not redefining the word to refer to it - you are if you want it to be broader :).

You can use any other word you want, but the "fast follow", for better or for worse, has a specific meaning that does not apply.

By the way I am a huge opponent of the fast follow strategy! I think it amounts to theft. The only legal protection companies have is design and utility patents, but that opens its own can of worms.

It is better if companies simply don't use this strategy to steal other companies' work.

I hope in reading the above link you will come to the same conclusion, and use different words to describe what you mean. Thanks.

You could search the web as a whole and find many examples of fast follower used as I used it. You don't have to look very hard at all to find it applied to Google. Your definition is excessively narrow.

Even Don Dodge calls Google a fast follower: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2010/10/first...

Guess where he works?

I want to be the guy whose job it is to come up with these puzzles.

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