Submission + - Google's Android open-source mobile phone OS (arstechnica.com)
Marvin the Paranoid Android writes: Google has officially announced Android, a its open-source mobile phone operating system. 'The Google Phone has arrived, sort of, but not in the long-rumored embodiment that many had expected. Google announced this morning that it has developed a new mobile OS called "Android" — a result of its acquisition of a mobile software company of the same name in 2005 — that will allow the company to get Google's mobile apps into as many hands as possible starting in mid-2008. Android is Linux-based and open source, and will be made available to handset manufacturers for free under the Apache license.' Google will not be making the phones itself; there are a handful of handset makers signed on, including Motorola, Samsung, and LG. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt puts it, 'Today's announcement is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models,'
