Jyri Engestrom (Jaiku/Google) just pointed me to the fact that Google has announced a major step into the mobile market. Android is the name of a 34 party strong alliance around an Open Source platform for mobile phones. To converge computing and communication more. (Android originally is a mobile start up bought by Google in 2005.)
Google’s aim is to earn money with advertising on mobile devices. Original rumours were that Google would introduce a GPhone (like Apple’s iPhone). But instead they are enabling everybody in the industry to create their own phones as it were with the Open Handset Alliance.
Jyri summarizes Android’s key points in Twitter as:
* Android does not differentiate between the phone’s core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone’s capabilities
* users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone’s homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications
* a developer can combine information from the web with data on an individual’s mobile phone — such as the user’s contacts, calendar, or geographic location. 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.
* allows devices to communicate with one another enabling rich peer-to-peer social applications
This is very interesting news, and I guess last week’s announcement of OpenSocial was not all of it after all.
What I think is key in this news is that Google is creating possibilities for other parties so that they can make money over it doing what they’ve been always doing: search and advertisements. That is both what OpenSocial and Androids is doing for Google. More also on the Google blog.
Also there is this video about Android on the Google Channel on YouTube:

Afterthought: with OpenSocial and Open Handset Alliance / Android, it is also clear that Open will be the new buzz-word for the coming time in webmarketing. I guess that’s good if it helps us to leave the Web2.0, Web3.0, Web x.0 metaphors behind)