So I get home from work and Brooke asks me if I’d seen the big announcement yet. Of course being at work all day, and having quite a busy time of things lately, I had to admit that I had seen no big announcement. My first reaction was “Has it been two weeks already?”

Google has finally come clean with their plans for the cell phone market. Its not a phone (The gPhone as people dubbed it) but it is instead something a lot better. Something that the Wall Street Journal hinted at a couple of weeks ago.

Google have announced they are forming a new group to be known as the Open Handset Alliance. After nearly 4 years, Google’s Android purchase of 2004 is going to show exactly what they’ve been doing behind closed doors. The result? An entirely new platform upon which to build next generation mobile technologies.

A broad alliance of leading technology and wireless companies today joined forces to announce the development of Android, the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Google Inc., T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others have collaborated on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.

This alliance shares a common goal of fostering innovation on mobile devices and giving consumers a far better user experience than much of what is available on today’s mobile platforms. By providing developers a new level of openness that enables them to work more collaboratively, Android will accelerate the pace at which new and compelling mobile services are made available to consumers.

Google Press Release

In short, Google is going to take on the Symbian bigshots, Windows CE/Windows Mobile, PalmOS and the version of MacOSX that is in the iPhone and iPod Touch.

For years we’ve been speculating on the GoogleOS, now its finally a reality. Unfortunately for those that really wanted it, this one is going to be intended for mobile platforms such as phones and PDAs. And they’re doing it in a partnership with nearly 35 companies from various backgrounds. This includes some of the big handset makers such as Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola. But lets not forget chipset makers such as Qualcomm, Intel, Nvidia and Texas Instruments.

But to show they really aren’t going this alone, Google has managed to convince number of other big software houses to get in on the action. Most surprisingly (if you know anything of the history between the companies) is that eBay is a part of the new alliance.

I think the biggest issue here is that it sounds like the platform will be sitting on top of either a BSD or Linux subsystem. The statements have basically said their intention is that the software written by 3rd parties be no less important or integrated into the machines than the software that comes bundled by default. The APIs will all be fully open and anyone will be able to develop their wildest ideas on top of a mobile platform in which always-on internet connectivity is a prime (if not core) function.

And all this without advertising :-P

Google is turning into a master of hype. If not on the same scale, then very close to the scale that Steve Jobs manages to have floating around Apple all the time. Could it be that Eric Schmidt has been studying Steve Jobs while attending Apple board meetings?

All I know is that Google has managed to play the whole Gphone hype perfectly. How? By completely ignoring it and letting everyone else work themselves up into a lather. It meant that when they did finally have something to announce, everyone took notice.

I’m looking forward to playing with the SDK myself. For no other reason than to see just how open it really will be, and what kind of architecture we’re likely to see underneath.