From Gemini 4 and Android 17 to AI glasses and a brand-new operating system, this is the most consequential Google developer conference in a decade
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20 hours ago
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The last time Google walked into its own developer conference with this much on the table was 2014. That year, it showed the world Android Lollipop, Material Design, and Android Wear all in one breath. The tech press spent weeks writing about it. Developers rewrote their apps. Users felt it for years.
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Google I/O 2026 is shaping up to be bigger than that.
The main keynote begins on May 19 at 10 AM PT at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. Two weeks out, the picture is already unusually clear: a new Gemini model, the biggest Android update in the platform’s history, a brand-new desktop operating system, AI glasses from fashion brands you actually recognize, and a developer toolchain that puts Google in direct competition with every major AI coding tool on the market.
Every piece of this matters on its own. Together, they describe a company that is not adding AI features to its products. It is rebuilding its products around AI as the foundation, and Google I/O 2026 is where it tells the world what that actually…