Android may be an open-source operating system (and has been widely celebrated as such), but Google isn’t shy about the idea that it hopes to profit by underwriting its development. And with Google’s first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, just about here it’s becoming clearer exactly how they want to benefit.
T-Mobile’s G1, otherwise known as the HTC Dream, is the first phone to go on sale with Google’s Android operating system built in.
Google executives have spoken about Android’s general benefits: the company wants to use it to accelerate the use and sophistication of mobile Internet browsing, and open the “hood” so to speak, for tinkering by outside parties. But judging from my testing of a G1 phone, it appears Google wants a more direct benefit for their own bottom line, too: more users of Google’s various online services.
Although there’s nothing stopping a G1 owner from using search engines and other services from Google rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo (though most web users on PC/Mac desktop systems predominently use Google as their SE of choice), Google technology is built deeply into the G1 by design, and that trend will continue.
The hooks get a little more obvious when things get more personal. The Android phone asks you for your Google account information when you first start it up, and if you have a Google account, it immediately grabs your contacts, calendar appointments, and Gmail messages and loads them up for you. Convenient you might say, but very deliberate as well. This function does NOT exist for their rivals, such as Yahoo.
The tie-in to these personal services is telling. Google has dominated its competition when it comes to the search engine market, but it hasn’t been as successful when it comes to more more personal uses of its services such as e-mail and social networking. With Android, Google apparently hopes to establish more of this direct contact with Internet users and use the OS to leverage its position in the market.
And it’s still the very early days for Android. At the same time Google or others could write applications that dovetail with various services. And by the same thought process, given Android’s free software development kit and open Android Market for offering new applications, I’d expect mobile applications from Google rivals like Yahoo and MS as well. Whether they’ll be able to take center stage in Android is another matter.
Source: techslant.com
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