Seems like everyone did not get why Google choose not to demo Social at Google IO this year. Obviously, part of it is that they do not want any other parts distracting it.
But, the other part i believe is some focusing on what is coming for Android for rest of 2011. While we already know that GoogleTV Android Sdk addon is coming there are of course other items that have only been hinted at with brief one sentence paragraphs.
For example, the music store hinted at GoogleIO 2010 is somewhat late as it was slated for holidays 2010. However, the Android Market changes to pave the way for that in terms of better access, in-app payments,etc have been incorpoated into Android Market.
With Apple testing over-the-air iOS updates slated for full implementation possibly in iPhone 5 that means apple will have the means to attack the low-end as before that style of updating you had to have access to a desktop mac to do updates. This means Google and OHA has to offer something beyond the navigation and text to voice. That obviously could be finishing the UI/OS fragmentation work of moving everyone to the Honeycomb UI apis including OEMs as that would result in OEMs getting updates to mobile carriers in terms of weeks rather than months. Thus, that is something to look for in does Google show off an Android 2011 road-map or show a new version of android for phones with the new honeycomb UI apis being used.
But, no matter if those get fully addressed or not it should be an interesting Google IO.
MobileBytes 