I'd argue that the definition of "developer" is expanding to embrace a larger and larger set of people, people who previously thought of themselves merely as technology enthusiasts or heavy users of technology at home and in the workplace. And Google is at the forefront of pushing this redefinition.

Google executives Vic Gundotra and Sundar Pichai hinted at the expansiveness of I/O's reach. We've heard that some 7,500 developers are registered for this year's event. Gundotra, a longtime champion of developers at Google, noted that 1 million people were watching the live stream. (That's him in the image above.) And Pichai hinted at the explosion of post-PC, post-smartphone, post-tablet devices for which we might build experiences soon: Google Glass, smart watches, and other wearable-computing gadgets.

It's All About The Tools

A software developer, in the Microsoft era, was someone who wrote applications for a desktop PC.

Now, we get computing devices through an explosion of screens, from TVs to big monitors on our desktops to tablets and smartphones. Google Glass and the Pebble smart watch give us even smaller screens—just enough room for blips of information. There are simply too many ways of delivering digital experiences for anyone to dedicate developers to each one.

That means that we need more and more layers of abstraction around the development of software. At I/O, Google showed off one such tool, called Android Studio, which aims to simplify the frustrating process of figuring out what screen an Android user might have. It was launched to big applause.

A new developer console for Google Play, Google's store for Android apps, tells developers when they're getting a lot of users in a specific country—and even offers a translation service to adapt apps to speak those users' language.

But Google also seems to be recognizing that there's a set of people who need simpler tools. Take its mobile content recommendations tool, which people can add to a website with a single line of code, like dropping in a YouTube video.

Think of managing a YouTube channel, or a page on the Google+ social network: Those, too, in a sense are working in code, though at a very high level.

As is anyone publishing a website. Google's tools for webmasters, aimed at helping them make sure users can find their pages in Web search, can be thought of as another form of access to Google's platform. Those are slowly getting woven into Google+, as are Google-linked Android and Web apps, which can now use Google+ to let users log in and share activity with friends.

And for that matter, Android smartphone owners who simply download an app are, when you think about it, reprogramming an incredibly powerful computing device. That's working with code, whether or not they think of it as such.

Services At Your Fingertips

We're only seeing glimmerings of how Google might pull this all together. But consider how, say, a music-video app might interact with Google. It might well use YouTube for distribution and discovery, as well as having a Google+ page. It might use Google+ for sign-in and activity sharing, so when people search for an artist's name, videos watched by friends pop to the top of search results. For mobile, it would certainly have an Android version, sold through the Google Play store, of course.

That's a staggering array of Google services that one app developer might need to touch. And it's hard to imagine that any single developer, or even a team of developers, might be able to learn how to use them in great depth. That means Google will need to deliver more simple ways of accessing the power of its computing platforms.

There will always be a need for highly sophisticated programmers who dive deep into code, plumb the depths of computing architecture, and probe the limits of what's possible.

But for the rest of us, who just want to do something amazing and make use of Google's tools while doing it, one line of code sounds awfully nice.

Photo by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

Same goes today for Vic Gundotra and his team at Google+. Here they are, building a social network that gets bigger and better every day, while their biggest rivals, Facebook and Instagram, keep planting land mines around themselves and then stepping on them.

The latest example is this uproar over changes Instagram made to its terms of service, which maybe gives Instagram permission to use your photos in ads, or maybe not, but anyway, everyone panic, it's a trap!

Instagram Backpedals

Everyone freaked out, so yesterday Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom issued a backpedaling blog post that said, basically, Um, no, you guys all misunderstood what we're planning to do, and we need to fix the language in our statement, and we're totally not going to sell your photos to advertisers, we're just saying that we have a license to license them to advertisers, which is not the same as selling them, so we're totally not lying, right? Although yeah, maybe, like, we might, um, someday use your photos in some new kind of advertising or brand promotion that we're hoping to experiment with or something, but as of right now we don't have any intention to do whatever it is you're afraid that we might do, at least as far as we know at this very minute as I am sitting here writing these words, though that could change in the future. So, we good?

This is a classic Facebook-style response, the non-apology apology combined with non-admission admission, where you try to sound contrite and you fire out a lot of words and hope that everybody just gets more confused and nobody notices that you didn't actually say that you're not going to do the thing that people are worried you might do. My sense is that Systrom sold his company to Facebook and now is waking up realizing the kind of people he's actually leapt into bed with, and maybe it is also dawning on him that these guys now own him and can tell him what to do, and maybe he even regrets this turn of events, but several hundred million dollars has a way of assuaging that pain.

The Anti-Backlash Backlash

The anti-Instagram backlash of course prompted an anti-backlash backlash, as the usual lineup of Silicon Valley apologist bloggers (apolo-bloggers?) rushed out to defend Systrom and Instagram, arguing that everyone was just being ridiculous and freaking out for no reason because Instagram isn't doing anything bad here, and the new terms aren't any different from the old terms, and everybody just needs to sit down and read the legal documents, or just trust Instagram and Facebook, because why not? Look at their track record. Good people.

But if the new terms aren't any different from the old terms, why did Instagram and its lawyers feel the need to create new terms? Does anyone believe that big publicly traded companies suddenly start adding new wording to their terms of service just for no reason? Just for giggles? Just to piss people off and send users into a panic? 

Who knows. I am not a lawyer, as folks online like to say. 

What I do know is that I'm not going to pore through the legalese of the new document and compare it to the wording of the old document and then try to parse the meaning of the different wording, because frankly I don't have time to wade through legal forms, and I don't think I should need a law degree to stay on top of the constantly changing terms of service of an app that lets me share photos with kooky old-timey filters on them, especially since I'm married and I have kids and a job and a mortgage and loads of things that are far more central to my existence than worrying about (or using) Instagram.

The takeaway for most people will be that Instagram made some changes, and the changes seemed skeevy, and not just to the unwashed masses but even to companies like National Geographic, which has stopped posting photos on Instagram and presumably did so on the advice of its own lawyers, who no doubt understand terms of service statements better than the average tech blogger.

Whatever Facebook does or doesn't plan to do with people's photos, the damage is done. If you needed another reason not to bother with Instagram, Facebook just gave it to you.

What's more surprising is the fact that people seem so surprised and disappointed -- and even kind of hurt -- to discover that Instagram isn't some well-meaning charity organization but is in fact just another grubby Internet business. How does anyone not know, at this point, that the people who are offering all these "free services" on the Internet are not a pack of heroic, idealistic entrepreneurs but are in fact just a bunch of icky businesskids whose idea of "changing the world" means tricking people into parting with data that can be turned into money?

It's 2012, people. Time to let the scales fall from your eyes.

The Exodus Begins

Now people are bailing out of Instagram, among them my colleague Jon Mitchell, an avid Instagrammer who says he's quitting because "it's not inspiring anymore." Our writer John Paul Titlow points out that Instagram also is alienating professional photographers.

How great is this for Google+? Photographers are one of the key consituencies and were among the service's earliest and most avid adopters. Photographer Thomas Hawk touted the virtues of Flickr and Google+ in his blog post expressing his dismay over the Instagram debacle. 

Some photographers love Google+ so much they even organized an "Unofficial Google+ Photographers Conference" earlier this year. Now even more of them have a reason to switch to Google+. And what can Instagram do to lure them back?

Facebook and Instagram are in a tough position. The only way they can make money is by doing things that members don't want them to do, things that, in ways big and small, diminish the experience of being on Facebook and Instagram.

So they must choose between advertisers and members, and so far -- I know this is shocking -- they keep siding with the ones who give them money.

The problem is that this strategy seems guaranteed to drive away members, which in turn drives away advertisers, which means it all ends in a blackened pit of fire and smoke, but by then, if you're clever, you've dumped your shares onto the suckers, made your millions (or billions) and moved on.

Google Doesn't Need To Put Ads On Google+

Google+ has no such issues. Gundotra and his team don't need to place ads next to, or inside, the news feed of Google+. They don't need to run sponsored stories and promoted posts and all the other garbage that increasingly clutters up Facebook. They also don't need to grab your photos and make money off them by using them in ads.

Google makes money from Google+ by using social results in its core search business. Who knows how much money, and really, who cares? Google could run Google+ as a charity, and whatever the whole things costs it would still be a rounding error to a company that will do $40 billion in sales this year and throw off $10 billion in net profit. I'd guess Larry Page would do it just for giggles, let alone for the chance to hurt Facebook, which has talked so much smack about unseating Google.

So what does this mean? It means Google+ guys can take the high road.

It means Vic Gundotra can wait for Facebook and Instagram to keep doing dumb things, then put out a high-minded statement like the one I got from Google: "As our Terms of Service make clear, ‘what belongs to you stays yours.’ You own your files and control their sharing, plain and simple. Some of our services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In addition, on Google+ you can export your photos and other data whenever you'd like."

It means Bradley Horowitz can get up on stage at the unofficial photographers conference and strike a Jesus Christ pose (seriously, check out the photo on that link) and say that Google's goal is simply "building a product for humanity." 

It means Google can just keep its head down, keep adding features, keep not running ads, and watch in glee as Facebook and Instagram keep pissing off people by trying to make money off their personal information and photos. Vic Gundotra would never say this, but I'm sure he's happy today.