InsideGoogle

Google Announces Open Handset Alliance; There Is No GPhone

Google confirmed the worst-kept secret in tech, that they have developed an operating system for cell phones, called “Android”, and have built the “Open Handset Alliance” to develop open phones that support it. This caps year-long rumors that Google was making a “GPhone”, rumors “confirmed” by every major tech blog.

Will those blogs apologize for getting it wrong?

Lets get to the news, first. According to Google, “Android™ will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications”. The idea behind all of this is to be open, so applications will have access to all of the phone’s technology and functions (as opposed to Verizon phones, which disable features except for VCrap/VCast paid application).

Android is built on Linux, making it familiar to many current software developers, and it is open source. Phones will not be able to lock out third party applications, or give special priveleges to their own apps, with users able to change literally anything and everything about their phone’s software.

Android launches with the Open Handset Alliance, a coalition of companies that will put this software on their phones, presumably elminating the need to pay for software licenses in exchange for losing the ability to lock down everything. Partners include HTC, T-Mobile, Motorola and Qualcomm. Phones won’t show up until the end of next year, though an SDK should be available in about a week.

Here’s a video Google put up introducing Android:

This video has kids talking about what a “magic phone” could do:

I like this:

With Android, a developer could build an application that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect.

Uh, that’s what Dodgeball did! Does this mean Google wanted the Dodgeball guys as part of the Android project, and they quit the company instead? Or am I reading too much into things?

Meanwhile, Valleywag is all over the fact that they were saying for months that there was no GPhone. I’ve been avoiding the story this whole time, knowing how Google isn’t into the whole hardware thing, writing only a single article on the topic asking why the hell everyone was writing about this mythical GPhone.

I wonder if all the blogs that wrote aboute the GPhone, the ones that had articles claiming it was “confirmed” and that they had concrete information, are going to apologize now and look into how they screwed this one up. Valleywag has been saying for months they were getting it wrong, anyone who wasn’t over-excited and ignoring the facts could see that Google wasn’t making a phone, but they all got it wrong.

Gizmodo still says the Google phone is coming, this time talking about the prototype designs Google commissioned. Microsoft has done prototype designs for many software products, including prototype PC designs, but Microsoft never produces the actual hardware. The goal is to help hardware partners see what they could do, and that’s all Google did, yet even after Google says “There is No GPhone”, we keep hearing the myth of this GPhone coming. Even if it comes from HTC, someone will be calling it a GPhone.

November 5th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | General | 2 comments