Google I/O 2011 apparently sold out in 59 minutes this year, and for that hour the registration site was almost entirely down.  Obviously it's a popular conference, and it's poor form for Google to have their servers crashing, turning the registration into a game of chance.  (It's also not clear that the conference is genuinely sold out, because the system is that bad!)  But the real issue in my mind is that Google have turned what's supposed to be a developer conference into a giveaway, by giving away free phones every year whose value exceeds the price of registration.  This year people are probably expecting the Nexus S or the Motorola Xoom - or maybe even both.  Last year there were a bunch of scalpers on EBay selling their tickets, usually having pocketed the phones and probably selling those separately, making a tidy profit.

So what should Google do?  They can either keep running their conference as a (unlicensed) lottery, but in that case they might as well just have the technical talks elsewhere.  Or they can try to have a real developer's conference at Google I/O.  It looks like this year is a write-off on that front, unless they do something to dissuade the people just after the freebies.

My idea: Announce that there will be nothing given away at Google I/O this year, offer free refunds to anyone that wants them, and open a waitlist.  The scalpers will take their refunds, and the real developers will be able to get in.