Why Google loves developers

On Thursday, the company will host its first Google Developer Day, attracting 5,000 people to 10 locations around the world, including the San Jose Convention Center in California.
The conference is part of a company goal is to cultivate a better relationship with programmers, particularly those on the cutting edge of mashup development, a relatively new style of application development that combines information from different Web sites.
In conjunction with the conference, the company on Wednesday announced Google Gears, a Web browser plug-in that allows Web developers to add offline access to Web applications.
Google Gears is part of the company's strategy to court developers in order to make Web applications more capable--a goal that it is taking substantial steps to achieve, particularly for a company whose primary business is online search.
The company employs some of the key engineers in open-source software projects, including Linux kernel contributor Andrew Morton, and gives outside developers access to its services, often for free. Employees even write tools, released with liberal copyright and usage terms, to make the lives of Web developers easier.