Ever wonder what Google plans to do next? I just spent the last two days finding out, and the results were pretty interesting.Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering at Google, yesterday opened Google I/O, Google’s first developer conference, by saying that Google has three goals for its business:

1. Making the [Internet] cloud more accessible
2. Keeping connectivity pervasive, and
3. Making the client [browser] more powerful.

Those points may seem generic, but they add up to an important idea: the web is the pre-eminent movement of our time. And Google wants to make everyone a part of it — and in the process make more money than ever before.Making the cloud more accessible generated the biggest applause of the keynote as Google opened up its App Engine to any and all developers (previously, it required an invitation and had a wait list of 150,000). App Engine allows developers to run Python-based applications using Google’s “cloud” infrastructure of hundreds of thousands of servers, and the concept of Google renting use of that infrastructure to any and all comers fueled a lot of excitement.Keeping connectivity pervasive meant one specific thing: providing a full featured mobile web experience. But as I observed in my recent report, Building The Anywhere Web, Steve Horowitz, Engineering Director for the Android project, noted that supporting 14 different major mobile web platforms was just not viable for Google developers, to say nothing of mere mortals.

And while Apple’s iPhone has blazed the trail to that experience, Google’s Android demo demonstrated that there’s more than one way to get there. Steve showed a full-functioning Android handset that was touch-enabled, Google-powered, and fast; think 3G open source iPhone. Rumor has it that the actual hardware being demo’ed was an HTC “Dream” handset, and Steve showed it doing things even the iPhone can’t, like doing Google Street View panning in real time. Very impressive.

And what about making the client browser more powerful? That was all about Google Gears (now called just Gears) allowing browsers to take applications with them offline and making the browser experience richer. That means that browsers can store data on the client computer and interact with the user independently from the Internet connection. In fact, Android phones can host and run browser applications without even launching a browser, while still allowing developers to deliver their application features using familiar HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Platform features like multiple threads, local databases, and full text searching are all included. And Myspace.com’s SVP Allen Huff announced a new version of its mail system with these capabilities was available that day to prove it all wasn’t just smoke and mirrors.

And on Thursday, the final day of the conference, Google VP Marissa Mayer looked under the covers of Google’s core business: search products and user experience. When asked about how Google came up with its minimalist approach to user design, she admitted that it wasn’t some grand plan at the time. Google founder Sergei Brin built Google’s first home page and admitted that “I don’t do HTML.” But since that day, Google has been data-driven, measuring and analyzing everything from how much white space should be in search results to how to attack translating web pages into other languages. Marissa noted that unlike many other companies that build products, Google’s focus is on building real technology and systems and continuously learning from what users actually do, not what we think they should do. And the company revels in the constraints of hard problems.

So what can I conclude from two days surrounded by Googlers and Google developers? I take away four primary ideas:

1. Google is all about improving everything quickly. Most companies think of release cycles measured in months or years. Google measures release cycles in hours or days . Google’s process of continuous improvement occurs at a rate that most companies only dream of.
2. Anything good for the Internet is good for Google. Everyone keeps expecting Google to stumble because it isn’t focusing on monetizing its many initiatives quickly. But Google isn’t about making money from just YouTube or Gmail — ANYTHING that makes people use the Internet more drives Google’s core search business. The next time anyone disses Google Earth because it doesn’t make any money should take note of Marissa Mayer’s comment on that project: because it drove more use of the Internet, it actually increased Google’s search business. It had the highest return on investment of any project Google had ever done — even though it was never designed to make money.
3. The Androids are coming. Apple’s iPhone is a great device, but also an exclusive and closed one. Android devices will in many ways be the iPhone’s polar opposite, evolving from a chaotic, community-driven development model instead of a controlled one. Expect it to evolve to become one of the most important mobile platforms, if for no other reason than the fact it will drive innovation faster than any other. Note that I didn’t say it would become the biggest money-maker; that’s an entirely separate issue.
4. Catching Google is a fool’s errand. With Google operating now in more than 140 country domains and 110 languages, the company has evolved far past its humble beginnings less than 10 years ago. Anyone trying to create a better search system or advertising network today (are you listening Microsoft?) is aiming at the wrong target. Google’s core competency is that it drives fundamental computer science research on impossible problems with at least a 10 year time horizon — something that used to be the province of research institutions like Bell Labs. Yet Google can change at an Internet pace, innovating fast, and evolving faster, because it owns the data stream, the pulse, of what Internet users actually do. And that insight — knowing what Internet users do and want when its competitors don’t — will make Google nearly impossible to catch.