No G-Phone: Google releases Android O/S with the Open Handset Alliance

The mobile phone industry has been buzzing a lot recently expecting Google to announce its G-Phone. Now Andy Rubin, the Director of Mobile Platforms at Google discusses the expectations and reality of what Google will be doing in the phone space on the official Google blog in an entry entitled Where's my Gphone?

What is Google doing? They are releasing a new operating system for mobile phones that Google calls Android. It is what Google calls the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile phones. It includes the operating system, user interface and some applications. Google has developed it together with the Open Handset Alliance, which includes some 30 companies highlighted by Motorola, Qualcomm and T-Mobile.

An intersting twist on the play, and sounds quite "Google-like" I'd say. I'm sure our friend Ajit Jaokar at Open Gardens is happy ha-ha, as are many more of our friends who appreciate open systems like we do of course here at Communities Dominate. But personally, am a bit disappointed as I had hoped to see another major "outsider" (like Apple) enter the phones biz to shake it up a bit. Well, even if its only on the software side, good for you Google, you are very welcome. Now lets go learn what Android can do, and lets start to see it on some handsets...

Comments

[Jouko Ahvenainen]

Tomi, I think Google did exactly what company like Google is doing (I copy here want I just wrote elsewhere). OpenSocial is quite natural next move from a company that wants to collect a lot of data. Social networking platform is a valuable source of behavior and social network data. And it is much more than have one or two social sites. The main concept with mobile has similar objectives. Who will dominate mobile usage and social data in the future. And finally who will prevail in digital media marketing.

But is it so simple that one company can prevail all relevant data in the future. Is it even possible that one company can collect all data when there will be more and more data all the time everywhere? I believe they can collect a lot of data. But on the other hand I believe that the services and data will be much more de-centralized in the future.

Intelligence comes nearer users and user devices. Smart analytics, customer profiling, and social intelligence come also to terminals (PC or mobile). The best solution to challenge Google is not to try to collect more data, but to have more intelligence to utilize the data. This is exactly the point where we at Xtract help media and mobile companies challenge Google.

[David Cushman]

I would love google to make a phone; just to see what it would be like from their perspective.
But Google hasn't (to my knowledge) made a pc either.
It worked out that it doesn't need to. It worked out that offering the things that people use the devices for is more important.
There is more value in being a petrol station than in being a fuel tank.