Google has the sales, but where's the sizzle?

SAN FRANCISCO – Google I/O is a tech showcase the tech press eagerly awaits.

Moscone Center will be jammed to the rafters with developers, analysts and media when the conference opens today.

Who wouldn't be excited to witness Google Glass for the first time, as was the case at I/O in 2012, with a harrowing sky-diving demonstration? Over the years, the event has been a launching pad for new, shiny objects such as Glass and Nexus Q. And yet...

The company of the self-driving car, fiber-optic cities, space exploration and assorted "moon shots" seems to be drifting – if the conference is any indication.

This year, the buzz around I/O is decidedly low, following a pedestrian conference in 2014.

At I/O last year, we got Android Auto, Android Wear and Android TV. Little had been heard since, until General Motors on Wednesday announced it would roll out Android Auto and Apple's CarPlay across 14 models. A deal with Hyundai came earlier.

Last year, Google handed out free LG and Samsung watches. But the most well-received watch, the sporty Moto model, was not in production at the time.

Flash back three years to I/O and the debut of Google Glass (in limbo), the multimedia player Q (a beautiful corpse) and promises of a rejuvenated Google + (social-networking wasteland).

Perhaps it's that all the hype that makes Google suffer inevitable comparisons to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), set for next month in San Francisco. That high-profile gathering is expected to draw plenty of attention from developers and the press, especially if rumors of a new version of AppleTV are true.

Google I/O, like WWDC, is geared to geeks. Should something spark their fancy, it could lead to future developments that reach a consumer audience. Google is under enormous pressure, as any vendor is, to inspire its developers to create apps and services that serve Google's ecosystem.

Google I/O Evangelist Mike Pegg acknowledges the two-day I/O conference is not reserved for all of Google's product news this year. "We think there's some pretty exciting news," he said in an email. "At its core, I/O is all about celebrating the developer community and ultimately helping them grow and thrive… (you) will definitely see moments where we geek out on a particular API or a snippet of code."

To be fair, Google is a rare beacon in tech, a hugely successful company willing to take risks in far-flung industries and bet big on the future.

Android commands 78% of the smartphone market, compared to 18% for iOS, in the first quarter of 2015, according to researcher IDC. YouTube, with expected revenue of $8.2 billion this year, has been valued at more than $80 billion by a pair of Merrill Lynch analysts. Google bought it for $1.65 billion in 2006.

Google also is well positioned to tap into the Internet of Things through its acquisition of Nest, makers of high-tech thermostats and fire alarms. It parlayed sophisticated satellite imagery into Google Maps. Project Loon, Google's experimental effort to beam the Internet from high-altitude balloons to remote areas of the planet, is groundbreaking. And it is doing intriguing work in the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and contact lens wear. All the while, Google is also helping define – along with Facebook – where the Internet is headed.

What's more, the company's first self-driving cars will hit the road near the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters this summer.

"Google isn't afraid to take big swings at lots of things," says Isy Goldwasser, CEO of start-up Thync, maker of a wearable device that delivers the effects of either a sleeping pill or a double espresso. "I admire its risk taking."

And yet, Google is at a critical crossroads. If it doesn't hit upon its second act, it faces a long-term identity crisis – or the fate of Digital Equipment, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft, all of whom had rough patches – until its next big thing comes along.

Meanwhile, its primary business, search advertising, is under assault. Growth has tapered to 20% the past few years as Facebook makes major inroads with mobile ads.

Google, which some of its execs have compared to a latter-day Bell Laboratories, is hardly hurting. It raked in $66 billion last year, up 19% from 2013, and lords over the lucrative search-engine market. Google's market value of $370 billion is topped only by Apple and Microsoft.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company was created in part as the anti-Microsoft, yet it is in danger of becoming the "new" Microsoft: weighed down, in part, by excelling at one thing. Google's financial results have fallen short of analysts' expectations for six straight quarters. IBM and Microsoft went through similar phases – albeit longer – and rebounded.

The famous "moon shots," such as high-tech cars and glasses, generate plenty of buzz but not much revenue. That might come later, but it draws comparisons to Microsoft, which has also invested heavily in research and development with minimal financial payoff. Dominance in one area does not necessarily begat dominance in another. (This is a cautionary tale in the making for Apple and iPhone, too.)

Steve Jobs famously warned Larry Page, Google co-founder and CEO, to focus on what Google did best and not follow Microsoft in trying to develop a wide range of products, Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, told 60 Minutes in an interview in late 2011. The ultra-competitive Jobs no doubt was leery of Google's threat to his beloved Apple when he gave the advice, but his words were prophetic.

"Innovation is hard," says Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research. (Google is) "probably guilty of over-hyping things, but they're so big, they can take risks every year and come up with tangible products such as Google Drive."

"Being humble is not a bad strategy," Mueller says.

Jon Swartz is USA TODAY's San Francisco Bureau Chief.