Google I/O, the company’s developer event opened with a shot at Apple. The shots at Apple are certainly commonplace these days, but it’s rare for them to jump into it so quickly. During the intro to the opening keynote, Google’s Vic Gundotra showed the above picture to the audience, before sending out Director of Android Product Management Hugo Barra.

Of course the crowd got a big kick out of that. Apple’s Worldwide Developer conference is next month, and I’m sure we’ll see some retaliation then (if not before).

Barra got what is commonly referred to as the “activations pissing contest” started by announcing that Google has now activated over 100 million Android devices worldwide. He also shared the following noteworthy stats:

– 36 OEMs
– 215 carriers
– 450k Android developers
– 310 Devices
– 112 countries

Not bad, for Android’s still relatively young existence. He also showed a timeline of the progress of daily Android device activations leading up to now, where he said over 400,000 devices are being activated “every single day.”

Then came the Android Market stats (and this is before the new announcements of things like movie rentals and Google Music). Google has exceeded 200,000 apps available in the Android Market, and is experiencing “tremendous growth in app downloads”. Barra says that the market has seen 4.5 billion app installs up until today.

“What really matters is that the quality of these applications is phenomenal,” he says. “Android Market is seeing stronger faster growth than ever.”

Today’s announcements (which also include the pending release of the Android Market for Google TV this summer) should help too.