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Google's Open Source Mobile Platform

As expected, today Google took the wraps off of the gPhone (as the media have for months been referring to the rumored project). Google is "leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers," and will be licensing its software to all comers on an open source basis under the Apache license. (The Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen demonstrates a miserable grasp of what "open source" means.) Google's US partners include Nextel and Sprint, but not AT&T nor Verizon. Phones will be available in the second half of 2008 — not the spring as earlier reports had speculated. News.com's analysis warns that Google won't take over the mobile market overnight, though they quote Forrester in the opinion that Google may be one of the three biggest mobile players after several years of shakeout.

2 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Phone or Platform? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You are not smart.

  2. Re:Phone or Platform? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Grow up, get a real job, and just buy an iphone. There is seriously no room for hobbyists toys here. Everything is shifting towards black boxes and it is actually a good thing. With more blackbox technology run by competent tech companies we can actually have a coherent and stable technology infrastructure. Windows, for instance, was never the problem, it was the loose amount of software that could be run on it without any checks, and the pc industry breaking functionality. But seriously back to the point, what is the point of all this open platform shit? You want portable that just works? just get an apple product. Don't fuck with anything like the nokia tablets or anything like that. Technology will be able to flourish and at the same time be orderly and 'just work' if we just stuck to coherency.