Google Courts Developers

Google held its first full blown developer meeting recently in SF (Google I/O) packing in a big crowd of very bright (and young) geeks (can you imagine how out of place I felt without by iPhone?) The event was informative in any number of ways. Along the lines of "it might be really significant maybe" it was interesting to note that Google couldn't do either registration or feeding very well (certainly not to Microsoft's refined standards) -- do you think it's curious that a company with 2 million servers can't do registration in time for the keynote? More consequentially, in his keynote Google's VP of Developer Relations (and some other stuff) -- Vic Gundotra -- gave a strangely evangelical talk, speaking of how the community had built the Internet, not companies. For a company like Google that prints money this religious fervor all seems somewhat strange until it struck me that Google, unlike Microsoft, doesn't have a lot of experience monetizing software development (most of Google's programming effort is given away and the benefit accrued in advertising delivery). In stark contrast Microsoft (where Vic spent 15 years) understands intimately how their partners, ISP's and VAR's make a buck and how their efforts make Microsoft a lot of money. When Ballmer bellows "I love you!" at a developer conference it may sound corny but I have no doubt that he really means it. I think like the registration and feeding of large crowds, Google doesn't quite have the developer value chain sorted out.