Google hands out $500 in cloud credit to all I/O attendees

Google had plenty of gifts for folks who went to its I/O 2014 developer conference.

In addition to some wearable goodies — attendees could choose between an LG G Watch or a Samsung Gear smartwatch — the tech giant doled out $500 in credit for its Google Cloud Platform, according to an email Google sent out to attendees today.

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It’s a cute way for developers to feel more compelled to try out the Google public cloud services they heard about during the conference, with forthcoming features like an on-the-fly data-processing service, an application debugger, and a monitoring tool.

Google has been trying to add customers quickly as it competes hard with the likes of Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure as a service and the leader of the market, Amazon Web Services.

At the bottom of today’s “thanks for coming” email, Google left a bit of a treat for developers who dropped as much as $900 on their I/O 2014 tickets:

P.S. Google Cloud Platform is offering all I/O participants $500 in credit to build your web or mobile app. To get started, follow the three steps below:

1. Go to g.co/cloudstarterpack
2. Click Apply Now
3. Complete the form with code: GoogleIO

Google clarified that the credit expires after three months and — sorry, Bitcoin fans — can’t be used to mine some sweet, sweet cryptocurrency. It can, however, be used to manage your database and storage servers, assuming you want Google to handle that.