Google Announces "Open Phone" Coalition, No gPhone [Updated]

Ponca City, We Love You writes "USA Today has an advance story on Google's plans to announce a new operating system, geared specifically for cellphones with partners that include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo. Although details won't be released until later today the new G-system will be based on Linux overlaid with Java and Google hopes to have a branded device ready for worldwide shipment by spring. Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds. Google plans to basically give away the software developer tools, used by programmers to write new applications. "If you're a developer, you'll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly," said Morgan Gillis of the LiMo Foundation. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers. Sprint, the No. 3 carrier, supports the coalition, but it hasn't formally agreed to make the Google Phone available to its 54 million subscribers." Update 1727 GMT by SM: It's official, Google is releasing the mobile "Android" OS in place of the Google branded mobile phone that many expected.

AT&T?

AT&T... [is] noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers.

WHAT?! They support devices that favor Apple over other providers. Does anyone else see this hypocracy?

Re:AT&T?

But that's different. Apple isn't Evil(tm) and Steve Jobs is a Demigod(tm). The iPhone is an innovative product that will revolutionize the world! Thanks to Jobs' powerful vision, we will all live in one happy Apple Utopia(tm)!

Am I getting the MacFanboySlashdotGroupThink(tm) thing right, guys?

Re:AT&T?

Why is it that, every time I see a true Apple fanboy post here, I always get an image of James Earl Jones in "Conan the Barbarian," beckoning one of his followers to come to him by walking off a cliff?

Re:AT&T?

All AT&T said was that they didn't want to favor Google over other providers. We have to assume that they meant Apple. And why would they? They have a sweet deal with Apple. How is this in anyway hypocritical or evil? AT&T favors Apple, so they don't join.

People just look for any reason to be mad at someone.

Re:AT&T?

AT&T... [is] noticeably absent from the coalition not wanting to support a device that favors Google over other providers.

WHAT?! They support devices that favor Apple over other providers. Does anyone else see this hypocracy?

Not as hypocrisy, no. If they said that all coalitions should be provider-neutral it would be hypocrisy. If they just say that this coalition conflicts with their existing deals then it's not hypocrisy at all.

Google phone, long awaited

The new operating system will be called GNU/Goo/Do/Mo/SpriSamSun/Linux.

I, for one, welcome our new alliterative overlords.

What version of Java?

So what version of Java? Micro Edition? or full blown Java?

Re:What version of Java?

AFAIK, Sun is working on deprecating JavaME, and since Java's OSS now, it opens up the possibility of Google porting Java to the platform.

Re:What version of Java?

It gets better! Sun also has the Sun SPOT [sunspotworld.com] embedded development kit. Hopefully Google and Sun will collaborate and come up with the G-SPOT.

Re:What version of Java?

It's not that Sun is depreciating JavaME. But that JavaME and JavaSE will merge. More detail on this from James Golsing's blog entry [sun.com].

Re:What version of Java?

Will this be called JavaXP?

It's offical

Open Platform? Available to all? No hidden charges? It's official, Google is the polar opposite to Apple.

Re:It's offical

Well, I am an Apple Fanboi (according to those with the time to track such things) so I'm obviously biased, but I'll answer your questions anyway.

Hidden charges: the iPhone is sold at retail for $400, giving the impression that you pay $400 and own one, but that isn't exactly the case. The device will not function (even as an iPod or whatever) until activated with AT&T. The AT&T plans available aren't exactly out of line for unlimited data plans but they aren't discount plans either. All these limitations are because Apple also receives a subsidy from AT&T, which is a sort of hidden charge.

As for "available to all", there are a few possible answers. As of now the phone isn't available outside the US and (without hacking) won't work with, say, Canadian carriers. Or if you speak in terms of development, right now nobody outside Apple can develop applications (without hacking).

The iPhone is still rather great, at least for those of us who happen to live in a place where AT&T coverage is really far better than any of the competing coverage. But I think everyone is glad to see Google put on some pressure in this space. Apple makes some good software but can get stuck in a bit of a cathedral mindset that can make their platforms a bit stale.

Really.... how?

Mobile Web browsing is notoriously slow and Google plans to change that by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds.

There is so much wrong with this sentence that it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I wasn't aware that PC-type is suddenly a benchmark for speed... and how exactly is changing the OS going to make cellphone browsing that noticeably faster?
Also...

One caveat: You'll have to use Google for navigation

Do no Evil, eh?

Linux overlaid with Google?

I'm really interested to see how Linux can be overlaid with Java and Google.

Or maybe someone needs to brush up on their punctuation.

Privacy

Let me guess... they're going to offer it for free/at a reduced price in exchange for giving up all your privacy.

Y

Re:Privacy

Let me guess... they're going to offer it for free/at a reduced price in exchange for giving up all your privacy.

Privacy is just another asset I can use to barter. Why is it intrinsically "evil" for someone to choose to sell it? And yes, I understand that not everyone understands exactly what they're selling, but that's a consumer problem.

How open is open?

The article states it will be linux-kernel + java, and of course it will be google servises as default for everyting. That is all fine.
But my question is; what if I want to use other services, will that be possible/difficult?

Re:How open is open?

Here is the actual Open Handset Alliance [openhandsetalliance.com] Website describing Android. Third party developers will have access to all the hardware capabilities and software libraries that the Google software has access to. So developers can do anything that the phone is technically capable of. I imagine it will be fairly easy for end users to load new software onto the phone.

We already have fifty! Finish one!

Isn't openMoko and others (something QT) developing an open platform mobile OS already? Why not just take what they've done and fork it or help out. What's the point in yet another open mobile platform when there are already people that have half finished implementations.

Oh I get it. This open platform would be closed from the public to tinker with and actually only be available to the mobile phone providers? Is that the idea?

Re:We already have fifty! Finish one!

Wait I read this wrong. It's not an "Open Phone" at all.

This phone is going to be like the Motorola A1200 Linux phone I already have.

The new G-system will be based on Linux, a 15-year-old computer operating system that is available free over the Internet. Google's version will be overlaid with Java, a popular computer language.

It's just a DRM'd Linux Kernel with their proprietary java OS running on top. This phone is no different apart from now they'll give you more information on how to write programs for it. Big wow...

Gillis says Google plans to basically give away the software developer "tools," used by programmers to write new applications. "If you're a developer, you'll be able to develop (applications) for the new Google Phone very quickly."

I can develop applications for my Motorola phone too. What the hell is new here?

Re:We already have fifty! Finish one!

The article seems rather confused on the subject of open-ness. They say:

The finished product, expected within months, will unabashedly favor Google applications and services. "What's being developed is unlikely to be easily transportable to Yahoo (YHOO) and other (service) providers," says Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation

But then they state:

Consumers are potentially the biggest beneficiaries. Currently, many cellphone carriers limit the services and applications that their customers can use.

Ummmm.... it sounds like this new partnership is offering something that will, again, limit the services and applications that customers can use. Yes, it's another player in the market, and that kind of competition is a good thing... but having a phone providing Google-only services certainly doesn't qualify as "open" in my book.

I understand that they intend to make it easy for third party developers to make apps for this thing, but the above quote suggests that some components (in particular the Google apps) will be integrated at a level that third party apps won't be able to modify.

Again, I'm excited about the possibility of a new phone challenging the status quo in the cellphone market, but this effort hardly seems to be the drive towards openness that OpenMoko [openmoko.com] (and the now discontinued Greenphone [trolltech.com]) is driving towards.

Open source or open specs

The article is not clear, is the OS of the phone truely open source, or have they just opened up specifications for utilizing the OS?

Thus opening the third layer of the Internet

Code, content, physical layer. Those are the three layers that Larry Lessig uses to describe the Internet. His concern, as expressed in The Future of Ideas, is that our common global culture could be locked down if we don't work hard to keep the Internet open. So Free Software, Creative Commons, and now this Google initiative are going to start to move us away from our dependence on Microsoft, ATT, and Warner Brothers / Disney. Google isn't perfect, but I say this is a step in the right direction. Don't underestimate the importance of having devices with open code at the fringes of the Internet. Microsoft wants to force you to have non-Free software to access the Internet. This effort by Google is one step away from that kind of lock-down. You go, Googlers!

What I want to know is

What does this potentially mean for joe users like myself as far as interoperability with linux programs? Does this mean a platform that will be friendlier with syncing? Does it mean a competitive alternative to the WM phone OS? I ask because I really don't know. Any insights on this one?

My plan

For all who are getting a little weary of all those great "Open Phone" initiatives being touted here and there without seeing much practical (affordable, stable, educational, worthwile) upshot coming of them, here's my plan.

1. Get a small (and I mean 'small', because it'll basically be the footprint of your phone-to-be), well-documented ARM development board, a small keyboard and a display.
2. Get one of them dirt-cheap GSM bugs (an online store recently mentioned on /. sells them for about $50 a pop)
3. Find out if it also supports a speaker-output, if and how programmable it is (some GSM bugs have an USB or serial interface on which you can send AT commands).
4. Hook it up to your board and test it.
5. Rig the OS for the board.
6. ???
7. Have Phun.

No brand tie-ins, undocumented hardware, binary blobs in the kernel, outdated development toolchains, whatever. Just dial and answer calls, damnit!

WIFI

So when Google gets into WIFI hotspots will they call them G-spots?

Linux, with Java on top...

Unless 3rd parties get to develop in any available language and it's just that the GUI is in Java, what's to differentiate this from what Danger (Sidekick) does? What differentiates them from billions of other handsets that run Java apps at slow speeds?

A perpetual skeptic, I'll read the announcement for my real evidence. But it sounds like a Microsoft-type ploy may be in order, where first-party apps are fundamentally better than later apps (although they both suck) not by any difference or deficiencies in the goals or capabilities of the third-party developers, but because the apps are subject to different arbitrary rules. Or like the iPhone, where 3rd-party apps to date have been relegated to Javascript and an active Internet connection... Google's motto aside, be wary. Putting other people down to make yourself look good a practice that seems to have pay off for others.

iPhone, Apple and the Open Platform

By fostering open development for their platform and making it a central part of their strategy, Google may one-up Apple.

Sprint = WiMax

Sprint has invested heavily in 2.5 GHz spectrum, with 85% coverage of U.S. households. Predicted speeds [dailywireless.org] are 2-4 Mbp/s down and 1 Mbps up. Sprint's partnership with Google was announced in July [washingtonpost.com]. Quote: " '[T]his is not a cellular model,' said Atish Gude, Sprint's senior vice president for mobile broadband operations." At about the same time, Sprint announced a partnership with Clearwire, the other big WiMax spectrum-holder.

This could really put competitive pressure on telcos, especially if applications development leads to truly useful products. (Instead of silly little widgets.) Who wants a phone that can do less but costs more?

Nokia also absent

I'd say that the absence of the #1 cell phone maker (while #2 and #3 is there) is more striking than some net providers missing.

Second coming of the Jesus phone?

It will be very interesting to see how well Google does the phone UI. The UI of their (main) search page is pretty clean, amazingly so for a company with as many products to promote as Google and as big as they are. But a Web UI and a phone UI are completely different and I'm wondering if they were able to resist the desktop paradigm.

It will be especially interesting to compare this to the iPhone.

I'm hopeful that we can see some additional progress on the phone UI front now that there are competitors to the "old school" mobile phone manufacturers. Maybe between the gPhone and iPhone, UI nirvana will be reached. But I'm not counting on it ;-)

The follow-up article

Everyone missed the follow-up article!

"Nigeria has declared it will buy 500,000 gphones in the first batch but have decided to install WM6 over the top. Of course, they'll still pay for support from gphone".

The follow-up follow-up was something about Balmer, leaving the nigerian embassy) saying he had nothing to do with it while carrying a copy of Mandriva under his arm.

no single gPhone

There is no "gPhone". There are many gPhones on the Android open platform.

http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/ [openhandsetalliance.com]

I wish them luck

As much as my employer hates to see Google doing well, I hope that this announcement has the altruistic effect of making cell phone service in the US suck less..

but then, when i read the "pre-story" this weekend I almost posted a comment along the lines of what I'm posting now... ... no matter how good google makes something, once you start dealing with the US phone industry...it may be that not even google can make it worthwhile. GPhone changing the world was a much more credible idea when Google was going to own the airwaves. Partnering with existing cell companies means that we're going to get an almost-good, but ultimatly shitty product. However, I expect this will be a historical footnote that is used to trial/solve _some_ of the problems one encounters.. before google ultimately buys up that spectrum they're hoping to get and provides a mobile voice/data platform as a vertical market that they own completely.

Why will this fail? Partners!

I'm surprised that google is going the partner route. One thing that means is that the initiative is almost guaranteed to fail.

Why?

Because partners have their own agenda as to why they're partnering with Google.

Most carriers have long, and somewhat decent working relationships with their platform vendors. Apple comes out, and whacks all those relationships with a stick by producing a device that's arguably far superior to any US phone.

What are the other carriers to do? The phone OS's functionality is basically specified by the carrier, who picks and chooses various features depending on the phone's price point, how the phone will fit into the carrier's current phone mix, and the competition (not necessarily in that order). Google comes out with something that's "open" , and while it may be interesting, from a carrier point of view, that interest doesn't necessarily mean that it's going anywhere. Given how big Google is, the carriers may be on board just to sink the gPhone ship (welcome to corporate america).

Only time will tell. Will the gPhone be substantially better than Symbian etc?

The Google video

The Google video [youtube.com] about this (linked from TFA) is a bit all over the map, to put it mildly. It must be nice having so much frickin' money that you can wallow like that.

Let me be the first to say....

I CALLED IT! [slashdot.org]

Now all I have to do is setup a tech speculation blog and get some ads sponsored by Google.

Watch out Cringley I'm coming for your fan base!!

Google Phonelore

Does it have an ethical program?

Or will it join forces with the NSA Borg?

no QTopia

I'm not sure who tagged this "qtopia", but given that Trolltech is absent from the alliance, it's a pretty good bet that it's not Qtopia based.

http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html [openhandsetalliance.com]

Nokia Tablets

Well being open source I'm sure people will port it over to the 770, 800, 810 regardless of the lack of official support. At least I hope they do. :)

Google is the source of all evil

Google has always been in it for Google. Don't for a second Google isn't going to take advantage of every unfair and underhanded method to gain, keep and manipulate their users. They have turned 'searching' into a two tier system. They claim their organic searches are uninfluenced by how much you advertise with them, but rather the importance of your site. Then Google turns around and 'accidentally' crawls all the 'copies' of your ad on the tens of thousands (millions?) of sites that broker ads from Google, and "OOPS! Looks like your site just went up 1000 places in the organic search because hey look it's on all these sites that just happen to broker ads from us." Want to stop advertising with Google? It will cost you your organic ranking! "Oh well", you say, "let's just rely on our organic ranking on it's own merit?" Try telling that to all your competitors who are willing to give Google $1000 a week and push your organic ranking into obscurity. Google's search has 1% to do with ranking by importance or how many important sites link to your site and technical issues with the site and 99% to do with if you give Google money on a daily basis.

If you think this rather cool sounding phone is anything but a huge vector for Google to make a lot more dishonest money than you're living in la-la land. If MS was doing something like this it would be front page news, but since it's Google I'm probably the only one who thinks it's a bad thing. I'm not stupid though, so the companies I work for give lots of $$$ to Google every day just so we can show up in a search. I'm sure their phone will be very much the same, less a phone and more a conduit through which Google can serve up ads or their special 'search results' or whatever they are pushing with it, and you can be sure whoever gives Google the most money will be the ones who show up first in your searches using the phone.

What's this lead to? You search for 'pizza' and even though there are three or four places CLOSER and CHEEPER and MORE POPULAR, this other pizza place gave Google some money so guess which one shows up on top of the list? Searching for an attorney? How about a new car? Hope you don't need to search for "Google phone replacement". Google is USING EVERYONE LIKE A TOOL! I'm not sure how I feel about that but it's the truth that will set you free. Spread the word that Google = 2 tier plutocracy.

With a name like android...

... I just want to know whether they're paranoid [wikipedia.org].

And for five people reading slashdot...

From the video, referring to the UNIX command line, "five people reading slashdot will be all over this"...

Strange bedfellows for a linux phone

Look at the actual partners list:

Aplix (www.aplixcorp.com), Ascender Corporation (www.ascendercorp.com), Audience (www.audience.com), Broadcom (www.broadcom.com), China Mobile (www.chinamobile.com), eBay (www.ebay.com), Esmertec (www.esmertec.com), Google (www.google.com), HTC (www.htc.com), Intel (www.intel.com), KDDI (www.kddi.com), Living Image (www.livingimage.jp), LG (www.lge.com), Marvell (www.marvell.com), Motorola (www.motorola.com), NMS Communications (www.nmscommunications.com), Noser (www.noser.com), NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (www.nttdocomo.com), Nuance (www.nuance.com), Nvidia (www.nvidia.com), PacketVideo (www.packetvideo.com), Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com), Samsung (www.samsung.com), SiRF (www.sirf.com), SkyPop (www.skypop.com), SONiVOX (www.sonivoxrocks.com), Sprint Nextel (www.sprint.com), Synaptics (www.synaptics.com), TAT - The Astonishing Tribe (www.tat.se), Telecom Italia (www.telecomitalia.com), Telefónica (www.telefonica.es), Texas Instruments (www.ti.com), T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com), Wind River (www.windriver.com)

Some of them, e.g. Broadcom, Wind River or NVIDIA, are known for being hostile towards a fully open Linux. I don't know what this platform will look like hardware-wise, but these people don't make it bode well for the software side.

Get

I thought Google wanted to free my phone as in cost. It seems to serve them better if I can get on the net more, so I'll be interested to see how the price models vary for phones under the (G)OP Coalition vary verse a standard closed phone. If I can afford to use cellular internet, texting, email, etc. Then I would spend more time around Google products and ads making them money. So is Google dropping money to have Android places and if they are will I see some savings?

viable?

does anyone else think this could be a mistake for google? i think the odds are *at least* 70-30 against

Consortiums Don't Mean Products

over the years we've seen all kinds of industry consortia that never resulted in products and delivered more hype than what was promised. Since each vendor and then the carriers are likely to have the final say in what gets shipped and what level of openness is available, discount the hype here and wait for results. For example, the 2 Japanese carriers listed are also part of a different mobile Linux consortium. They may only be concerned about compatibility of the Linux kernels and libraries and have no interest in the rest of the stack.

Ignore hype and wait for real results.

Awesome!

Wow!

Google, huge though it is, is continuing to be a force for Good.

Here's the pattern Google is following, in the case of OpenSocial and now Android:

1. Big product with major consumer cred launches in June of this year and gains significant buzz and impressive growth.

In one case, iPhone. In the other case, the facebook platform

2. Big product, perhaps understandably, keeps certain things proprietary and closed

Apple releases the infamous 1.1.1 update, wiping out third party applications and locking down the iPhone software.
(perhaps understandably because you really don't want malware infecting your phone)

Facebook's platform has its own proprietary markup language and API
(perhaps understandably because it helps apps easily match the site's look-and-feel)

3. Google quietly works on a way to open things up some more. Allows ridiculous amounts of buzz to build up

Gphone, "Maka Maka"

4. Google quietly gathers a large list of industry partners that have been left behind by the trailblazer, and convinces them that uniting behind an open standard will be great for them.

Today's list of phone companies, last week's list of social networks.

5. Google makes a big announcement. Not a new product, but a new standard and some new software.

Android, OpenSocial

If this is what it looks like to have big bad Google exerting its influence on this industry, I wouldn't mind much, much more of the same. Compare this to how Microsoft acted when they were on top. Good for Google!

Where's the big ideas?

Where are all the big ideas? Is this /.?
Can't we just hope for the best and plan for the worst? Can it get any worse?
Why is everyone so eager for Google to go full on eVIL just so they can jump up and down screaming "I told you so!" Personally I think the real Ace in Google's hand is the fact that in the future the laptop and "PC" market as we know it is going the way of the mainframe. For the majority of Americans, Email, Chat, Word Processing, Internet and Media playback is all they ever use a PC (read Microsoft) for. Why do we need all that wonderful bloat that is embodied by Vista and alluded to by XP? My PC today doesn't do significantly (though it suffers more problems) more for me today than it did back in the days of 95 or even 3.1 for that matter. So here comes Android, which is an OS for "Phones" (which are quickly becoming ubiquitous for mobile computing platforms with always on data connections)
Did Google create its search engine to build an advertising business on? Is it possible that there is one company out there who is not completely motivated by their bottom line? It's not like their motto is "Do no evil" and even if it were it's only to misdirect and distract you from their evil purpose of .......gasp...... making money.

My Next Phone

My current phone is an iPhone. That's fine, I like my iPhone.

But assuming this goes well, my next phone will be one of these Android phones.

Verizon and AT&T absent, eh?

The absence reminds me of this Robot Chicken clip: http://consumerist.com/consumer/videos/veringular-were-dropping-your-calls-and-there-isnt--you-can-do-about-it-314260.php [consumerist.com]

Give me it!

Hey HTC, good to see you guys joining this historic venture!

Now please give us an android update ROM for your previous phones (universal, blueangel etc.) so we can all rid ourselves of the brain-leakingly-bad windows mobile.

Bonus quote of the day

Did anyone watch the http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gphone/googles-android-team-introduces-the-gphone-318878.php?autoplay=true [gizmodo.com]dev movie?

I quote

To run X, To run GTK, To run a bunch of Unix command line software. I'm sure there's a good 5 people out there who read Slashdot who'll be all over that

Slashdot - we're in your phonez, and they know it!

No actual phone?

So, no actual cool GPS iPhone-killer phone? Oh the unimaginable disappointment!

See, google are the good guys!

;) EOF

Worthless garbage...

This is dead long before it even starts. It's retarded. Why in the world would would a cellphone manufacture stick a third-party OS on their phones, tossing whatever work they've already done, with no support whatsoever? I guess Google assumes that manufacturers will build around it, but what's the incentive? This is a Linux hack, and there are already Linux hacks with a longer track record.

Re:gOS?

Ha - They must be pissed that gOS just got released... ;P

They'd better bring out chairs... Ballmer style...

Gosh, I just wet my chair. You are sooooo funny!

Re:Need Women's Opinions

I'm a man, you insensitive clod!

Re:Frist psot

Your post has so many contradictions it's not even funny.
-The summary states that this will be a very Internet-heavy phone
-You assume Google actually knows what they're doing with this phone.
-Last post, anyone?

Re:Need Women's Opinions

Also, please leave age/sex/location? Kthx.

Re:Maybe this helps...

3 relatively open platforms (OpenMoko, Google, Apple(?))

The iPhone os is not open source. If you are going to list it there, you should also list Windows Mobile.