Have a look at the full analysis of facts and repercussions of the Symbian Foundation here.

Andreas

Aside: I reckon that Google has gone about building an ad-brokering empire far more subtly than the likes of Microsoft built their (multiple) footprint(s). Somewhere at its startup, the people at Google and their advisors realised that getting and retaining so many eyeballs would lead to them cornering at least some forms of the online ad market. The core Google search algorithms and concurrent use of the low-cost, high-availability hardware/software/connectivity search-serving platform was/is foremost in their arsenal, but I’d say that the ability of the masses “to Google something” (How many people use the terms “Go Yahoo it” or “Go Lycos it”?) is simply a means to an end, and that end is the formation of a very large ad media serving/brokering footprint. I’m no fundi on keeping up to date with their share price trends, but I’d agree that going the route of developing android is a move to make the the online ad pie bigger and so sustain their increasing market cap via increased real/perceived future ad revenues. Perhaps when “TV” integrates IP on the same screen like a mashup of web and TV on one screen in your living room, they’ll have succeeded in making the pie even bigger?

Andreas

The controls that Google will add to discourage non-Google-enabled versions of Android is somewhat of a puzzle..

The two things Google might have up its sleeve is:
1. Keep some part of Android as closed source (it never said that 100% will be open). In fact the Android SDK isn’t yet under an Apache license.

2. Make it exceptionally easy for developers to develop apps based on Google back-end services (gmail, google apps, etc).

I would guess both above means would be used in the final Android SDK.

- Andreas

This is good and bad for Google. They obviously chose to go down this risky path for a reason. This reason is that it will allow for wider adoption in handsets. The risky side for Google is that other companies will be able to harness the technology without paying tribute to google (paying tribute would be in the form of services monetized by google ads).

It therefore seems Google is relying on loyalty, trust and other intangible emotional/human motives on the part of the Carriers and OEMs. It’s like they think: because we are the ones that developed this and put all our energy into it, the OEMs and carriers will want work with google to monetize the platform.

Earlier the example of Yahoo using the Apache 2.0 licensed Android platform was used. But a better example is if the OEMs and carriers do it themselves, monetizing the platform without any help from the software giants.

…So I can’t believe Google would be this stupid to just GIVE us God–um Google’s–gift to mobile phones. They must have something up their sleeve. Maybe it’s as simple as they already struck all the deals with the OEMs and carriers. Maybe it’s more deceptive: something kind of like what Apple has done that makes the Safari browser faster than the FireFox 3.0 browser in that Safari has access to special Apple development APIs that FireFox does not. But I doubt this, as it would destroy Google’s “do no evil” image.

So in conclusion they’re probably just going to out-develop everyone with their platform. Android is probably purposely built so that it is hard to force users to use the exact applications that come with it. It’s probably very dynamic in its ability for users to add and delete applications–it’s not going to be like Windows which gets most people using Internet Explorer as the web browser. So for the non-google endorsed Android platforms, Google probably has a plan to make users want to replace the default installed apps with google tools!

That’s all I can come with for now. Any other guesses?