The 2010 Google I/O Developer Conference saw Google's moves in the consumer space, away from its Internet search stronghold.

Android had always been gaining momentum, and the good reception that was accorded to Froyo was always on the cards. We will cover Froyo in a separate article after evaluating it when it is pushed to our Nexus Ones.

With its VP8 open sourcing, Google has managed to open up a can of worms. It is a great thing for consumers in the short run. In the longer term, we feel it wouldn't be of any benefit to consumers to have both VP8 and H264 codecs for different applications.

Google TV, as a software platform, is a laudable initiative. We hope it will get open sourced soon, as an Android port on the x86 platform has innumerable possibilities. On the hardware side, as a dedicated set-top box, things don't look that rosy. Fortunately, Google doesn't have much to lose in that perspective, as long as Google TV manages to reach the television in some form or the other. In this scenario, the open sourcing would create ports for the HTPC. Google would also do well to tie up with other TV manufacturers and TV programming providers (such as Comcast / DirecTV) to bring Google TV on their sets and STBs.