news.buyenne.com

Andrew Cunningham

This year's Google I/O happened in and around the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, which towered over the entire event.

31 more images in gallery

I'm going on my fifth year in this tech reporting game, and Google I/O 2016 is the only time I've been handed sunglasses, sunscreen, and a protective bandana as part of the welcome pack when I registered at an event.

Google's big developer conference this year isn't being held in its normal location at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco—it was moved to the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Google's hometown of Mountain View. The keynote actually happened in the amphitheatre, and the rest of it was spread out into various ticket and concession booths and the sprawling parking lots surrounding the venue.

As a change of scenery, the move outside was actually fairly pleasant. The worst that can be said of the weather is that it was a little hot the first day and a little windy the second day. My appreciation of the beautiful weather and California greenery was tempered somewhat by an intense allergy to blooming plants, but that isn't Google's fault.

Everywhere Windows 10 can be. And on the server, too, though there it gets a different branding. (credit: Microsoft)

The Windows 10 Anniversary update, due later this summer, represents a major landmark for Microsoft. As well as being a significant update for Windows 10 on the desktop and Windows 10 Mobile on phones, the release is also coming to the Xbox One. For the first time, the Xbox One will be running essentially the same operating system as desktop Windows. Critically, it will also be able to run many of the same applications as desktop Windows.

In a lot of ways, this represents the realization of a vision that Microsoft has been promoting for more than 20 years: Windows Everywhere. Always important to Microsoft's ambitions for Windows as a platform, the Windows Everywhere ideal has a renewed significance with Windows 10 and CEO Satya Nadella's promise that Windows 10 will have one billion users within the first three years of its availability. The purpose of that promise is to send a message to developers that Windows is a big platform, a platform that they should still think about and create software for.

But if it is to have a hope of hitting that one billion target, Microsoft needs more than just PC users to get on board, which makes it important for Windows to run on more than just PCs. Hence the need for Windows Everywhere.