Zero Gravity for All at Google Zeitgeist Partner Conference
Google’s big annual Americas partner event takes place this week at a fancy resort in Arizona. We at AllThingsD didn’t get the invite, though Google PR tells us to expect videos from the talks to be posted after the fact here, and also warned not to expect any product news whatsoever.
An attendee did send us the speaker list, so we know a bit more about what we’re missing: The lineup includes historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, producer J.J. Abrams, American Express CEO Ken Chenault and MIT biomechatronics researcher Hugh Herr. This year’s theme is “The World Around Us,” which sounds grand and vague and kinda self-centered despite itself.Plus, Google goes way beyond the normal conference perks of t-shirts and pens and fancy dinners. Attendees were each invited to participate in a zero-gravity flight that mimics the weightlessness of space. “As an extension to our theme, we will be providing an opportunity for you to experience what it feels like to be outside of our world,” Google told them.
By the way, the normal price for these flights? $5,000 per head.
But they don’t come without their downsides, as LeWeb CEO Loic Le Meur charmingly noted:
I’m back on planet earth. I went really crazy in 0 gravity with spins an upside down etc then my breakfast went 0G too!
— Loic Le Meur (@loic) October 14, 2012
Still, Google missed perhaps the most perfect product tie-in ever when it didn’t supply skydiver Felix Baumgartner with Google Glass to livestream from his own head his record-breaking trip from space onto (nearby!) New Mexico on Sunday. Sergey Brin, you have been seriously one-upped.
In more serious Google news, the company reports third-quarter earnings on Thursday.