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The key difference between iTunes App Store for the iPhone and the Android Market for Gphones… control.

Developers can put up anything on Android. The absence of Apple style scrutiny for the Android Market presents obvious upsides and downsides.

The ease of entry for developers sets the stage for both exceptional innovation and tawdry applications to coexist. Too much of the tawdry, and the market may be shunned.

The lack of enforcement for user interface standards is the proverbial double-edged sword. How does Google approach this challenge?

Eric Chu is Google Android’s Mobile Platform Manager:

“We feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available.”

The HTC Dream G1 which supports Android has a moving target release date. Speculation suggests T-Mobile could release it in the U.S. within the next three weeks.

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Google’s Android has now secured necessary approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

A beta version of the Android 0.9 SDK with tools for developers has been released along with a development road map for the Linux-based mobile operating system.
Here is the Developer Roadmap for Google’s Open Handset Alliance Project.

Last month, against the backdrop of a limited release, developers cried fowl. Now the doors have been blown wide open.

Sidebar: schematics have surfaced for the Android mobile device, the HTC Dream.

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Look for a T-Mobile Google Android device before Christmas.

High Tech Computer Corp. will manufacture the handset.

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When the Google Android open source mobile platform comes out of the digital closet, which Google watchers figure is mere months away, look for an Android store where developers can sell their apps.

Previewing the concept, Google Android Project Lead Andy Rubin…

“It would be a great benefit to the Android community to provide a place where people can go to safely and securely download content and where a billing system would allow developers to get paid for their effort. We wouldn’t have done our job if we didn’t provide something that helps developers get distribution.”

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Richard Whitt is the attorney Google sends to Washington to try and get the FCC on board with Android.

The day before yesterday Whitt made his latest Google Android pitch. The goal: to minimize the damage of a lobbying backlash from TV broadcasters worried about spectrum noise… the concern that a generation of new wireless devices will play technical havoc with broadcast TV and wireless microphones.

Whitt left behind a six-page brief and a few dreams. The dreams: “Wi-Fi on steroids” using unused spectrum on the TV band, or “white spaces.”

This dream sets up a torrent of data, gigabits-per-second speed over long distances for handheld devices.

“We’re doing this because we want everybody to be satisfied with this process. We think it’s the right time to put these ideas in the record and see where they go.” says Whitt.

Where would Google like this all to all go?

We now know Google wants to start rolling our devices using its open source Android platform sooner rather than later, perhaps starting this summer.

We know that the spectrum won’t be available for Wi-Fi 2.0 for almost another year.

We know there will be a bunch of devices, with dozens of firms in a manufacturing partnership.

And we know this isn’t just Wi-Fi on steroids. Google Android is disruption on steroids.

TV broadcasters have a track record of effective lobbying. To try and protect their threatened technologies and the financial value of their licenses, they are sending lobbyists from the National Association of Broadcasters into the FCC to elevate concerns over technical interference.

A possible red herring issue over the technical sanctity of white space has the potential to filibuster, delay or derail innovation.

Or perhaps the red herring issue is a legitimate issue.

As NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton puts it, “Portable, mobile personal device operation in the same band as TV broadcasting continues to be a guaranteed recipe for producing interference and should not be allowed under any circumstances.”
The Google response to this argument: filtering, where an “all-clear” signal will need to be received in a slice of spectrum before the mobile device launches.
Meanwhile, our thirst for open-source Android gadgets will grow.

Our curiosity about Wi-Fi 2.0 will expand. Google’s advertising platform will conceivably expand as well.

And here comes our real world drama… how regulators and lobbyists address old world media’s efforts to close the door on open access and protect archaic interests. How the high-stakes financial conflict unfurls.

Google Android Goes To Washington… the potential to be more dramatic, substantive and engaging than anything what we might expect from the fictional fare of a broadcast or cable network.

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