Submitted by Chad Shmukler on
The last year has seen a great deal of speculation about Google introducing a mobile phone onto the market. In the last few months, it has become fairly clear that Google would not in fact be releasing a mobile phone - but instead was creating an open source mobile phone operating system that would integrate fully with Google's existing services and offer developers the ability to create a wide array of applications for mobile phones.
In a video released yesterday, Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz of Google introduce the new operating system called 'Android' and confirm the fact that Google won't be releasing a "Google Phone" or a "gPhone". Instead, any phone that can run the Android operating system can be a Google phone.
The Android SDK is now available for download by developers. As Google explains in their introductory video (below), they expect the true potential of Android to be brought forth by developers around the world, instead of by Google themselves. To help facilitate such, Google is kicking off an Android development contest - best application takes home 10 million dollars.
View the video to learn more and see Android in action. You'll even see a few features in Android that will remind you of the iPhone (especially the browser and to little surprise, Google Maps).