Google Android - The Android Log

Fed up with your current cell phone — or your service provider? Mobile experts discuss what can be expected from cell phones and cell companies in the future.

Google is working to develop a new kind of software that could work on many different handsets — will it simplify the market or add to the confusion?

Guests:

• Steven Cherry, senior associate editor, IEEE Spectrum
• Mark McCluskey, senior editor, products, Wired magazine
• Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms, Google, Inc

Android, Google’s new mobile software platform based on the Linux kernel, is scheduled to be released in early 2008 under an open-source license. But hope for the new platform is mingled with worries that it won’t be as free and open as the initial publicity surrounding the release strenuously implies.

“I wouldn’t bother with this,” says Bruce Perens, a professional evangelist of open-source software. “It’s so easy to find a project that is 100 percent open source right now to work on, or indeed to create one. That way, I’d be a little more sure that my work wouldn’t be locked up with proprietary stuff forever.”

Android’s release last week was initially greeted as a breath of fresh air by those hoping to inject more freedom into the smartphone industry, which is currently saddled by various restrictions. Lockdowns on hardware functionality, demanded by service providers and enforced by the manufacturers, have resulted in a marketplace filled with crippled devices that are only minimally configurable or expandable.