Sergey looks like he partied hard last night.

Eeeeeexcellent.

When the user brings up Google Maps and is in the “street level” view, moving the phone around should “pan” the street view. For example, if the person who is holding the phone spins his body around 90 degrees, the view of the street should change as if the user moved his gaze 90 degrees, Bill Buxton style: http://www.billbuxton.com/boomChameleon.swf

Ohh, and Sergey looks like Butthead.

Strange that a Google platform is so heavy on graphics - I always loved the Apps Google produces for their simplicity and lack of resource-sapping graphics allied with snappy performance.
Seems Andriod runs counter to this.

That video is so deceptive. What phone are they even using that on? Does it even exist?

Lets hear some news about the phones that are coming that will use Android, then maybe we can chat about what type of applications are actually reasonable to write for it…

Android is just another iphone or MAC OSX clone for mobile?

Regardless of how completely unsexy the homescreen and general UI was, I think any new competition for the JesusPhone is great. If there is any company I am happy about Apple having to compete with it is Google. I feel like their normal competition makes it too easy.

I agree with Chris about the phone it is using. I’m a little surprised they aren’t talking about what phones will support it, if any, any time soon.

Scary how powerful some of the GPhone apps may turn out.

I’m not sure it’s a competitor for the iPhone, but more for windows mobile and even all Symbian phones.

If google succeeds in getting its solution adopted by some of the most energized phone builders (HTC & other chinese firms) + they can get developers to converge to this platform, well, they’re a just helping mobile 2.0 as they, in part, helped in web 2.0.

So for now, the only “open” platform to easily develop on is windows mobile. Iphone is restricted to the web, and even if it’s great, it’s just no the same as riche application (e.g: can’t use embedded camera).

Welcome to the Rich Mobile Application

Umm, close your eyes and listen to Sergey….. is he Ray Romano reincarnated?!

From the brief look I’ve given the API, it seems they are adopting a rather old school java application style of programming, instead of looking towards newer paradigms in UI technologies such as Adobe Flex, MS SilverLight and JavaFX Script for inspiration.

Flex, for instance, assists in fast development of impressive UIs while providing standardized data bridges to data backends and web services.

The UI seems so-and-so from the demos, and the data-bridging could be lacking the Rapid-Development coolness that other paradigms have shown. A lot of it focuses on storing stuff in the phone - is that key in a web platform world..?

Somewhat disappointing..

How blazed does Sergey look? Seeeeegeeeeeyyyy, caaaannn yoooouuu heeearr meee?

Well I for one welcome the android too. Android doesn’t compete with the iPhone, but it seems to deliver a stable, well integrated development platform for the mobile, so it’s competing directly with Windows Mobile and Symbian. It hits the soft spot of those by giving us a tightly integrated mobile experience, something that’s never been achieved by Windows Mobile, Symbian or even Pam OS.

iPhone is still only 1.5 million phones on 2 billion. Google is doing a Microsoft here. By 2010 we’ll have 5% iPhones and 95% phones running on an (open) OS that’s easy to develop for. And add Opensocial to the equation and suddenly all mobile apps will behave like a blackberry behaves for email on a mobile device.

The only thing I don’t like about the announcement is the price contest. Seems to me not the best way to stimulate innovation and creativity. They should also not make the mistake that Microsoft made and only embrace the developers, they should embrace open source psychologists, graphic designers, usability engineers and antropologists as well

Why all the nasty comments about Sergey Brin?
I, for one, have never heard him speaking before, and I actually thought he was quite impressive - not in a movie actor kind of way but more in a serious and smart person kind of way. He’s not a movie star, so why expect him to be one?

# 15

Best analysis so far. Obviously they are not ONLY

omg, look at his left eye. It is circular while his right eye is normal. It looks like if you peeled off his skin you would see a round camera for his left eye and metal. Maybe if you’ve got 13 billion dollars you can afford to become a human/robot prototype?

# 15

Best analysis so far. Obviously they are not ONLY competing with IPhone. I would love to know if it is possible to install android in a pocket pc with WM5, or other OS, or it will only be available in new phones. Cell phones are the new pcs, and Google could become the new Windows.

I remember one line of Steve Job’s speech when introducing the iPhone: “and boy, have we patented it…” (like the scrolling bit of pictures and webpages).

So, if Apple starts attacking the Google Android OS for reason of patent infringements, we know Apple is acting in fear of Android.

I think its a pretty good thing that Google are doing and I’m sure its going to be successful. It not only extends a lot of stuff not found in JavaME at the moment, but also makes good apps from Google available for a developer… And their prize money is going to be a nice motivation for a lot of apps!!

It might be less sexy on paper but I think google is wrong to try to play against the carriers while Yahoo make partnerships everywhere in the world and in Asia in particular. Google cannot beat the carriers, they created and own this business and don’t want google to bully them. If they don’t support a set of services, it won’t be promoted properly and won’t be successful (except with a handful of early/only adopters).

“Scoble thinks it’s rubbish and I don’t agree”

Why even mention what Scoble thinks?

Scoble is ALWAYS wrong unless somebody just whispered something to him a few minutes ahead of time like was the case at Microsoft.

As a matter of fact I have been reading his blog for years, and I don’t think he’s been right one single time.

He’s a jolly fellow indeed, but a good forecaster he is not. Android is a lock.
For our Chinese friends, that means it’s GOOOOOOD.

I bet he didn’t even run the emulator or try the eclipse plugin. You have to see what you’re talking about before you can talk smack. I bet his friends didn’t demo the SDK for him either.

That’s why I think we should shy away from Techcrunch and Scoble a little. There are no developers on board to give real technical overviews of actual products.

These blogs are full of FUD, and because the public in general is also uneducated they eat it up. I think that’s wrong.

Android will win the war against all other mobile OSes in an year. It is pity that people do not understand what openness means. You ask any J2ME developer how difficult it is to go system level in Symbian phones. Hopefully google will let us do lot more things because thats google’s all-time USP.

I don’t worry about competition from iPhone since it will not hit the mainstream market (American techies are not mainstream market - a clerk in Bangalore is).

Who ever adopts Android will make more money. No idea who does not want that.

I believe Sergey has implanted V1 of the gbrain. V1 is apparently a quite a bit taller than a normal brain.

Yeah…but APPLE makes it EASY….look at the Ipod…there are TONS of mp3 players on teh market, but the ipod makes it simple. people just want things they can buy and have them do what they want without having to download/upload all kinds of crap.

@12

I think it’s great that Android is embracing Java, including NIO, and adding OpenGL extensions. This is hardly a step back — it’s a step forward. Finally we can return to real programming and get away from that ActionScript rubbish.

“Sure, it’s not an iPhone, but how quickly we all forget life before Apple entered the cell phone market.”
———-
Sure it’s not an automobile, but how quickly we all forget life before Henry entered the transportation market. Hmmmm, nice horse-n- buggy ya have there fella.

“Yeah…but APPLE makes it EASY….look at the Ipod…there are TONS of mp3 players on teh market, but the ipod makes it simple. people just want things they can buy and have them do what they want without having to download/upload all kinds of crap.”

The Mac was so easy, Windows 1.0 was released and sold copies to compaq and PC clones == Game Over.
Android is free, has a managed java SDK, a plugin for eclipse, and is partnered with a variety of providers.

You people are looking at the next windows and you don’t know it yet.

AndroidGuys.com is devoted to following anything and everything related to Android and the OHA. Like many of the comments here, we are very excited about the potential that exists for phones in the next year(s). Please stop by the site and leave us a message. We’ve just uploaded our first two podcasts. They’re 20 minutes each and, we feel, definitely interesting to listen to.

I think it’s a notable point that they used Java and not Mono for the developer platform.

1. If they had used mono, Microsoft would have sank their boat, or held them hostage Novell style.
2. Java is already the developer platform for games and applications on Motorolla and most other cell phones.
3. Eclipse is free and runs on Mac, Linux and Windows giving developers the biggest chance to be able to develop for it.

When this OS takes over Mono will be greatly diminished, because most devs will be spending their time outside of Visual Studio and in Eclipse. IBM, Sun and Google prevail, and Microsoft and Novell take a hit.

This initiative will also finish off a failing(failed) silverlight/moonlight platform and help Adobe systems. I hope Google works out a deal for native flash support. I think they have the power to do that.

Christopher Walken called. He wants his hair and android speech pattern back.

Sergey Brin reminds me of an earlier Christopher Walken…

Android certainly looks promising, but the challenge is going to be getting all the partners to sit and create something useful. Each of the partners of Android have different philosophies, none of which is as simple as Google’s itself.

Competition to the iPhone is needed; after all, it’ll be fodder for Apple’s development .. and I bet they’ll come out with some leap frog development in Macworl 08 anyway.

“Each of the partners of Android have different philosophies, none of which is as simple as Google’s itself.”

You don’t understand, this OS will allow all phone brands to inter operate in the same way across multiple hardware platforms. Just like Windows did with compaq, IBM, and other clone brands back in the early 90’s.

It’s write once run anywhere. You write your app once, and it will run on any device running the phone with any chipset. The apps are portable Java code in a jarchive. Just like a game for your cell phone.

Just as Red Hat/Novell puts their own homepage on Mozilla Firefox before they rpmbuild package it as RPM, that will be the extent of OEM customization.

None of you, esp Scoble is grasping the bigness of this. Imagine those poor kids that have to close shop on Visual studio and start using IBM studio. Fake Steve Ballmer jump in at any time with a comeback.

Flashback to 1995 or was it 1996 to the era of the java applet…

There was an explosion of creativity among developers making
all the useless doodads that will now be unleashed on the
android platform…

Developers! dust off your old applets and port them to android.

One of the cooler things about Android could be as a replacement for the PC.
Billions of people will never use a PC - they will connect their phone to a keyboard and TV and get the same experience.
Instead of “third world” computers, like OLPC, people will be able to use the phones they already have. $0 beats $200.

As for mobile application development, there is a certain paradox.
On the PC, there is a movement towards less applications and more web-based services.
On mobile, it sounds like everyone needs to write their own applications on the iPhone etc. But what if a good browser is enough to do most things that most people want to do?
Freedom of information for the end user - such has having access to all the web on your phone - is much more important than the freedom to write applications.
All this talk about applications, is it because developers think application development is more fun than web development?

I am really happy to see a really Open phone O/S, from what I understand we will be able to buy apps to replace ANY part of the phone which is pretty damn cool. Basically my gPhone could look and act quite differently from your gPhone.

This is a relief compared to the “almost open” phone O/S like Windows Mobile where you can’t do this, or can’t do that.

The only thing I don’t like is the use of Java this is a very slowwwwwwww language. I hope they will provide a low level C/C++ SDK.

“Billions of people will never use a PC - they will connect their phone to a keyboard and TV and get the same experience.”

http://www.beercosoftware.com/.....le-web-30/

I wrote a riveting post about this device(the Android docking bay) on Halloween.

Um, Google is synonomous with commercial ads. How many ads are on your phone now ? NONE! That’s how many. How many will Google via Android bring to your experience ?! Stop drinking the Goolaid and wake up to this people ! How ’bout a little critical thinking and commentary on this ?!

How will Google make money with Android?

It would be great if we could hide spam commenters such as Chris R. who not only insult techcrunch but insult the intelligence of other commenters as well.

“Um, Google is synonomous with commercial ads. How many ads are on your phone now ? NONE! That’s how many. How many will Google via Android bring to your experience ?!”

Android is Linux, while OEMs won’t remove the adsense experience because of contractual obligations with Google, Individuals can freely hack it under the GPL license and remove Google’s revenue completely then flash the firmware with the OS.

It won’t be easy at first, but tools and frameworks will eventually make it easy. Google can’t legally stop it, because it’s based on GPL licensed code. They are at the mercy of the license as are the phone companies that deal with them.

Ok, tell me again, I know this is open source s/w but which carrier would opt to develop and support interface to yet another non-Google maps program? Very unlikely IMO plus Google Maps leads to directories, business listing, etc where the ads dollars are abundant. So for you tech head that keeps thinking that Google is doing this out of a concern for developers/common platform, think again.

Something as easy as an application that can break out of the java jailroot to edit the /etc/hosts file could set the Google adwords server to NULL, and kill their revenue. It would be a popular hack too.

@ 43

Google will indirectly make money becuase more people will be on or connected to the web with their phones. More connected phoens = more advertising potential.

Aside from adsense, does google have plans to charge phone manufacturers to run android on the phone in the form of an ‘Android License’? That seems like the best way to go, sort of like MS Windows.

Conceptually, this is a great initiative, but the reality is, mobile applications are a nightmare to develop. Not only will developers have to deal with unique hardware configurations of each manufacturer, but also, the ‘pain in the ass’ software configurations of the carriers.

This is why the concept of a ‘gPhone’ was so promising. Google could develop on their own platform within their own spectrum.

If every user needs to connect to XMPP through the Gtalk XMPP servers (which is how the API is set up right now), then doesn’t every Android user who wants to actually use Android to it’s full potential need a Google login? If you have a google login, you are probably going to use some google services. And don’t forget Google has the mobile advertising market staked out. Google has a lot to gain. Lets not be naive here.

Secondly, to people criticizing the Android prototype for not looking like an iPhone. Please. The iPhone interface is not well integrated with any kind of message passing system. Android is. So at least I can receive a bloody IM message while looking up pron. For gots sake.

With Android I could choose to create an application that notifies me of stock price updates by pushing data to my phone on XMPP, and the Android UI could update the app on my phone launch the app, place a notification on the top of my screen…… These are things Apple never thought about! Its about communication baby.

The Android interface, as jumbled as it appears in its present state, still looks much funner to use than WM6. Much.