Google throws a good party and this year teamed up with Samsung to make the I/O conference the hottest ticket in town for attendees. Attendees snagged a cool $1,400 worth of loot for showing up.
Google throws a good party and this year teamed up with Samsung to make the I/O conference the hottest ticket in town for attendees. Yesterday all 5,000 attendees of the Google I/O conference were handed Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets, a Samsung 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot and a voucher for free LTE service from Verizon. Today the crowd was stunned to hear they would all be receiving Samsung Chromebooks come the release date of June 15. Whatever you think of Google's business practices, it knows how to get its core supporters pumped up.
How much these high-tech handouts cost Google and Samsung is anybody's guess, but we can look at the retail value and get a good idea. No doubt the two companies produced these giveaways cheaper than retail, but they were still worth a bundle by any metric.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1- $599 (32GB retail, this was a limited edition for Google IO)
Samsung Mobile Hotspot- $270
Samsung Chromebook- $429 (assuming WiFi only)
Verizon 4G 3 months free- $150
Google is understandably excited about Android and Chrome, and now 5,000 enthusiasts are too. Hats off to Google for getting this group of developers and analysts pumped up for the cause. The safest bet in Silicon Valley now is that Google I/O 2012 will be full 5 minutes after registration opens.
