I've been there for the last 2 years, but this year I decided to ask my company for a flight to pycon instead.

For an Android developer, there are a lot of great talks at I/O, and you have the opportunity to meet the complete Android team and ask them questions.

But last year they reduced the event from three days to just two, and the first day starts with a 3 hour sales pitch for the press.

I met some interesting people there. One of them is working with me now, so that trip was definitely worth it. But I like to experience conferences like short educational trips where I learn new things with other people, and I think 5 days with the Python community will be more fun than another Google show.

I've been every year. By far, the biggest value is in having the largest concentration of Googlers you'll likely ever encounter as an outsider. For instance, if you're a web developer, you can ask deep questions from people on App Engine, Chrome, and Material Design all within 50 feet of one another. The ability to ask in-person about the internals of an App Engine Pipeline, or get a Chromie to pull up a secret profiling screen to help kill some jank on your Chrome Experiment is why you pay $900 to show up.

(It used to be a lot more affordable, but when people started presuming that they'd seed expensive hardware every year, demand went through the roof.)

If you can get your company to pay for it, go. If you can't, but you are heavily reliant on Google APIs (Android, Chrome, AppEngine, Geo, etc.), you should probably still go. If you work with primarily open tech and are just curious about attending (or if you just want random free shit), it probably isn't worth it.

I think its worth it, disregarding the hardware giveaways, because the networking opportunity and the relationships that you can build in the conference is worth more than the money.

Worst comes worst, you can consider this as visiting some festival like Mardi gras of Google :P

I've never been, but you will likely get free stuff. In 2013 everyone attendee got a Chromebook Pixel (and the new Pixel was just announced). The free stuff alone may justify the ticket price.

http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/05/15/google-is-giving-a-f...

Google has given out hardware worth more than that every single year. That being said.. they might not this year :)

You can get invites into new APIs, services, etc. So it is an opportunity to jump on a departing bandwagon earlier.

On the other hand, maybe it is a better idea to just steer clear of experimental Google APIs, services, etc and just use their core product - search and advertisements. Think Google Code...