T-Mobile G1 Updates Blog

There was a time when Google was simply a handy search tool on the net. Now, billions of dollars later, they have decided that complete dominance of the web search and advertising markets are not enough. They want to take over the mobile platform as well. Enter “Android”. What is “Android” you ask? It is an open source mobile platform that Google is launching first on the T-Mobile network and eventually on the other mobile networks as well. The great thing about “Android” being open source is that anyone can develop for it. This means a lot for the mobile programming crowd. It is very likely that once aspiring “Android” coders learn how to program for it, we (the consumers) will have many amazing applications for the platform. The SDK (Software Development Kit) is now available for anyone to download and start programming in the language of “Android”.  This is thanks to the cooperative efforts of the Apache License and the Open Handset Alliance (the Google founders are members of the committee).

Raising The Bar

What this means to competing mobile platforms is that they may have to step up their efforts if they want to keep pace with the big “G”. Google is known for throwing dollars at their pet projects and they have a lot more money to throw nowadays. This project has been many years in the making and it looks like it’s going to raise the bar for mobile platforms (just like Apple raised the bar for mobile phones  with the Iphone).

A small company from California

When Google decided to enter the mobile market, they wanted to acquire a company to do the coding for their platform since they had no experience in this, as yet, uncharted terrain. They chose the company “Android” (a tiny start-up company from Palo Alto, Ca) and used their mobile platform as the weapon of  choice in the mobile wars. The language is a mix of Java and Apache Harmony with Java implementation. Java purists agree that this is not a true Java language because it has compatibility issues and it’s missing the full class libraries and apis that normally come with Java ME or SE. Although for it’s mobile efforts, “Android”  is a great solution with many possibilities.

The road ahead

Only time will tell if Google will succeed with this mobile effort, but if their past conquests are any indicator then we should see them takeover the mobile playing grounds in a few years. So get ready for those annoying ads to hit your mobile phone. Additionally, Google predicts that their mobile ads will trump their home computer ads in a few years time. That’s quite a bold statement considering that the pc ad business generates revenue in the multi-billions. One thing is for sure though, consumers will have lots of mobile phone choices in the years to come. That is the most important factor in the end.