Great, so I guess this is the beginning of the Google Phone saga where there's a post covering what every technology magazine and writer says, picking apart every aspect of the phone and speculation of what's to come, even though there's no release date: ala the iPhone.

"The Dream is said to include a touchscreen that swivels to reveal a keyboard and is responsive to the duration of a press rather than just the location."

That doesn't really make any sense. I'm guessing you mean it can detect how hard the press is, but duration would just mean how long the user was pressing, which any touchscreen can do easily.

Sound eerily familiar?

Like Balmer and the iPhone or the Palm CEO

Sure, but I believe the most important point here is, "we've been doing it for five years." (Yeah, and it's still a festering turd)

Except that prior to the iPhone Apple had a history of producing tightly integrated software/hardware combos with excellent interfaces.

Google has no such track record, has never built any hardware, doesn't appear to be planning to build hardware, and has to this point released software with mediocre to bad UI.

Not that I disagree with your premise, but Google did make a search appliance. Although it was just a rack mounted server with a custom paint job, it was hardware with integrated software.

m

Maybe I'm missing something but I didn't they'd released anything but a platform/toolbox - no UI, or if there is one its for demo only. They want to provide a basis, reference platform to try to bring standards to the field, which benefits their business model. The difference between this and MS is that they're offering this platform for free. They are trying to provide a unified management of linux for stability (IMO) so that wider-spread adoption in the mobile arena is possible. If they can maintain their focus here, on managing and improving the sw, so their advertising model works, I think they can be VERY disruptive. They do need to provide good UI tools, but they still leave the UI development to the hardware producers, for tighter integration with HW features.

Most of Google's partners today don't expect Android to completely replace existing options; HTC says it will continue to release devices with Windows Mobile alongside the Google platform. Competitors such as Microsoft and OS developer Symbian dismiss the effort, however.
"It really sounds that they are getting a whole bunch of people together to build a phone and that's something we've been doing for five years," says Microsoft's Windows Mobile marketing general manager Scott Horn.


These are the guys this initiative will hurt...Windows Mobile is the target.

No question that Microsoft is a target. Another target could be RIMM which enjoys the most corporate IT acceptance. Also, I'm hearing some positive things about Nokia's OVI platform but I haven't seen the UI. I find it troubling that Google's CEO is so close to Apple.

Let's face it, iPhone is everyone's target and the mobile industry is very aggressive. Notice how quickly LG introduced touch screens for Verizon. However, Apple somehow continues to beat them to the punch. Bottom line, iPhone owners will realize more and better applications at a faster rate than previously thought. Thoughts?

Quite apart from the fact that the ill-chosen word "ovi" (which, unfortunately, sounds like a plural of 'ovum') might sound a bit creepy to 50% of the world's population, where/when have you heard "positive things about Nokia's OVI platform"?

Just curious.