Officially, Google may not have declared anything out in the open, but developers working in the company are having quite a gala time as they have come out with an interesting puzzle, which when solved, would eventually reveal the dates of this year's Google I/O event.
The company's Firebase and Google Developers' Twitter account posted the link to a few puzzles for the public to work out and find the dates.
Around the world, from here to there, to the most clever minds, the secret will share. #googledevs #savethedate https://t.co/0zwCbSLzVy pic.twitter.com/0O2vNDWZx2
— Google Developers (@googledevs) Jan. 24, 2017
The link on the Twitter account takes one to a hidden site. On clicking "GO" in the hidden site, one is navigated to a GitHub website, where a set of coordinates for a jungle in Brazil is available. The next puzzle leads to an unlisted YouTube video. The caption in the video shares another set of coordinates.
The third puzzle of the game reveals a location in Warsaw Poland, and the fourth puzzle reveals a riddle, hidden in a corrupted image which leads to Thailand.
Finally when all the pieces of the puzzle are available to an explorer, he or she can solve the same. The names of the countries, if assigned to positions on a chessboard and adding and subtracting the value of the letters, would provide the name "L IN E THEATRE SHO RE AM P H I." A bit of rearrangement would reveal the name Shoreline Theatre.
The puzzle revealed that the Google I/O event will take place at Shoreline Amphitheater, just like last year with a bunch of tents around for guests to take a seat. It will again be a three-day affair starting on May 17 and wrapping up on May 19.
The whole idea behind this interesting concept has been to lead and entice the audience online to employ a great deal of intuitive estimation and thinking to discover what the puzzle conveys.
Sources and experts associated with Hacker News quickly worked out the possible dates linked to Google's 2017 I/O developer conference and the possibility of the event taking place.
What To Expect?
It was only last year when Google ventured out into the open and hosted the Google I/O 2016 event outdoors in its own backyard. Hopefully this time, Google will learn from its past mistakes and will implement a proper system to avoid long queues for both seeing panels and getting to food stalls.
It is still quite early to estimate what may be announced at this year's conference apart from the next version of Android.
Photo: Sean Choe | Flickr
