20 May 2025, Google Milano. The I/O Extended watch party of GDG Cloud Milano — the Google I/O keynote followed live from California, at seven in the evening Italian time, with ninety-odd developers in a room. Except the room was inside Google's own Milano office on Via Federico Confalonieri, which is not a room you get to sit in every day.

So the badge is a Google Guest sticker with 05/20 printed on it, the countdown to the keynote plays on a wall of screens, the toilets are signposted with Android robots, and the community dinner afterwards is served in a staff canteen called Google "la Trattoria". Below is the evening, from the last spritz before the metro to the last glass after the keynote.

• GoogleIO
• Gemini
• Agent Mode
• AI Mode
• Project Astra
• Flow
• Android XR
• GDG Cloud Milano
• Milano

Eight years of watching I/O from somewhere else

I have been going to I/O Extended events since London in 2017, when the watch party sat in Google's Campus for startups in Shoreditch. Then a couple of editions with GDG Bologna, then Milano — and this one inside a Google building again, only now the actual office rather than a co-working space.

1. 2017 London, Google Campus The first one, while I was working in London
2. 2018-19 Bologna Two editions with GDG Bologna, during university
3. 2023-24 Milano Back to it with the Milano GDGs
4. 2025 Milano, Google office 20 May — at Google’s Milano office

Getting there

An ordinary Tuesday at the office, a spritz at six, and then the M4 — Milano's newest metro line, driverless, platform screen doors and all — on the way across town. Not the longest journey to a tech event of my life: Barcelona and Berlin still hold that record.

Six o'clock, one spritz, then the metro

Through the M4, Milano's newest line

My employer, advertising over the platform doors

Inside Google Milano

The office is the part a developer does not get to see often, and it is exactly as advertised: the logo etched on the frosted glass at the entrance, a printed floor plan on a mustard-yellow wall, the same logo again on a column, and the washrooms marked with an Android robot instead of the usual pictogram.

The door, and the four colours on it

Even the signage runs Android

"Washrooms behind this door", per the robots

Ready, set, I/O!

The watch party ran in a hall with two rows of screens — four televisions along the top, two projections below them — and rows of white chairs facing them. For half an hour before the keynote the screens looped the I/O pre-show: Ready, set, I/O!, the gradient shapes of this year's identity, and a countdown animation of balloons and toy cars building the numbers down to one. Then the lights went down and Shoreline Amphitheatre appeared on all six screens at once.

The countdown to the keynote, on every screen

Six screens, and a room filling up

"Ready, set, I/O!"

The GDG Cloud Milano hosts, before the lights went down

Clouds, rockets and floating objects

Microphones, drifting across six screens

The gradients of this year’s identity

Orange, on all four at once

And blue, right before the lights went down

Toy cars building the numbers down to one

The keynote

Then two hours of announcements, watched from a chair in Milano. Gemini pushed all the way towards being a universal assistant, with an agent mode that takes a whole task off your hands instead of answering a question; AI Mode in Search going agentic, able to pull from your own mail and to take you from trying something on to buying it; a new generation of video and image models with Flow, a filmmaking tool built on top of them; a large update to Project Astra; and, the one that made the room go quiet, the first live demo of the Android XR glasses, translating a conversation in real time on stage. Android itself had had its own show the week before, so this keynote was almost entirely AI.

Google Guest, 05/20

Shoreline Amphitheatre, on six screens

#GoogleIO on the stage, the crowd underneath

Sundar Pichai walking out onto the stage

"Coming soon", with the live captions running

Four above, two below, one keynote

The room, from the side aisle

Nobody left early

Dinner at Google "la Trattoria"

The last item on the GDG agenda was a community dinner, and it happened in the office canteen — which is signposted, in enamel letters over the door, as Google "la Trattoria". Prosecco, pizza and prosciutto served in a Google staff kitchen, while the arguments about what had just been announced carried on standing up. Genuinely the most Milanese thing about the whole evening.

The brown enamel sign: GOOGLE TRATTORIA

The same sign, over the door

Through the door marked GOOGLE TRATTORIA

Google "la Trattoria"

Prosecco, in a staff canteen

The community dinner half of the agenda

A staff kitchen, borrowed for the evening

Standing up, still arguing about the keynote

And after

Out around half ten, and then the part that is always the same whatever the conference: a table somewhere else, under a glass roof, still talking about it. Four months later the conversation moved to Berlin, at Fluttercon Europe and droidcon.

Under a glass roof, half past ten

Google I/O 2025 Extended Watch Party by GDG Cloud Milano, Google Milano, Via Federico Confalonieri 4, 20 May 2025.