Now it's just a dog & pony consumer technology show, and Google has so many irons in the fire that each technology only gets a few, if any, talks.
They should go back to having a true developer conference, and have some other conference for the big wigs to play Steve Jobs.
...but of course I'll try and get a ticket this year.
Last year, these were replaced with "help desks", and while the people there were very friendly (and while I really appreciated the one guy who went pretty far out of his way to obtain a stock image for a Nexus 7 when it seemed like I might have needed to flash one), all of the people identified themselves as "developer relations", not "developers", and none of the people I had gotten to know as key members of their team from previous I/O events were present.
(I also, like others, find the situation of "it is economically incorrect to not attempt to go to I/O due to handouts" ludicrous, and I wish they would stop doing it, even though I know it would make some of my friends who often attend with me sad. Google has tried to improve the situation by having handouts be given as part of talks and having the timing of central ones staggarred across the days, but it doesn't solve the core problem that there is no entrance cost to attending this conference.)
I convinced some colleagues to go last year on the merits of that alone. Was seriously disappointed with the help desk format it devolved into.