After Google announced it was working on an operating system based on its Chrome Web browser this week, many wondered: Didn’t Google already build an operating system? And isn’t it called Android?
Not so fast. At a joint T-Mobile and Google media event Friday morning, Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering at Google, said Chrome OS isn’t a substitute for mobile operating systems like Android, which have to solve many problems unique to mobile phones, such as managing battery life and ensuring calls don’t drop as a user is moving between cell towers.
“Chrome has a very Web-centric view of the world,” he said. “There are different problems to be solved in different categories of consumer products,” he went on. “You need different technology for different solutions.”
Rubin crystallized the differences during a wide-ranging discussion in San Francisco with T-Mobile’s chief technology officer Cole Brodman about T-Mobile’s new Android phone, the myTouch, and where Android — the thick stack of software Google developed to power higher-end cellphones — is headed.
The new phone, which will hit stores later this summer, is T-Mobile’s second Android device. It illustrates how the software, and the way companies are customizing it, is evolving, the executives said. One of the new features is a search button built into the hardware of the device. When pressed, it brings up a Google search box that will search within the content the user is looking at at the time.
There’s more to come. Rubin said that future versions will support more social-networking features. (He added that Google has been naming each new Android release a dessert, alphabetically. This spring, Google shipped “Cupcake.” “Donut,” “Eclair” and “Flan” are next.)
“Social is a big push for now,” he said, saying eventually an inbound phone call could show the caller’s photo, name and the last update he or she posted to Facebook, for example. Another focus is expanding the ways software developers who build applications for Android phones can charge for them through the Android market, its storefront.
Currently, the store only supports Google’s payment service Google Checkout, but eventually, Rubin said, it will support multiple billing systems. Brodman said that T-Mobile will soon allow customers to charge application purchases directly to their T-Mobile bill.
Despite the fancy software features, many handset makers have been slow to release Android phones. In the U.S., T-Mobile is the only major carrier that has launched one. Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo launched its first Android device — made by HTC — this week.
Rubin said momentum will pick up and that he is aware of roughly 15 to 20 Android devices likely to be in the market this year. He recently met with a hardware company that showed him 18 different devices running Android, he said.
Google notes that Android was designed for non-computer devices other than cellphones; Mr. Rubin said he’s seen robots, GPS terminals and even refrigerators running the software. “We are agnostic to the physical infrastructure that we are running on,” he said. “Fundamentally, we are trying to connect them all.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/10/android-will-live-on-get-“sweeter”-and-more-social/
