Written By Sepideh Saremi | November 5, 2007 | Share This |

Google has finally put months of rumors about a Gphone to rest today, announcing not a phone but an open mobile operating system named Android, and a conglomerate of tech and mobile organizations called the Open Handset Alliance. From the Google blog:

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform.

This means that potentially, any phone could be a Gphone. For those disappointed that there is no actual phone, the announcement also came with this barely related yet effectively distracting dose of extreme cuteness.

Android won’t be available until 2008 and will require purchase of a new phone; in the United States, that’s either from Sprint or T-Mobile, but details are still being hammered out.For Google, Android means expansion of its mobile presence and more thus more places to drive ad revenue. It’s also another instance of the company creating an alliance to meet its own business goals, while also guaranteeing PR coups by aligning those goals with the greater good of the Internet; just last week, Google’s announcement of OpenSocial, a consortium of sites developing open-platform standards for application developers.

Topics: Google, Technology, Wireless & Mobile |