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The Google Android statue outside the Googleplex, affectionately called BugDroid, is ready for Halloween with its pirate costume while being surrounded by its release update treats of Cupcake, Donut, & Eclair, but not his trusty dog Alex.

The BugDroid dog Alex is still missing or perhaps now pronounced dead as there is a tombstone in his spot.

The statue was also called Mike & Droid, but Droid is now becoming more synonymous with the upcoming Verizon Android phone series that launches on November 6th a week from today.

Raytheon has told Forbes they are preparing to use Android software in order to save lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Raytheon has termed this framework program as RATS for the Raytheon Android Tactical System.

RATS is to use Android software for the military to combine its use of maps with a buddy list to locate & communicate with other military personal and vehicles.

I doubt they will be the using the G1 for these operations unless its attached to a nuclear device in order for it to last for more than a few hours.

I will be speaking about Google Android on the SMX East Mobile Search Apps & Opportunities panel in New York City at the Javits Convention Center Monday October 5th.

I will talk about the mobile growth of Android as new phones continue to come out and its applications are growing faster than the iPhone as a percentage month or month this year.

Now that the Donut 1.6 Android update is rolling out from T-Mobile OTA to the G1 & myTouch 3G phones in the US, it will allow greater exposure to those applications with its Android Market interface improvements.

Google Android engineers are putting the final sprinkles on the Donut branch and moving onto Eclair this week.

Interestingly some sprinkles are also going to be added to CupCake as well which would be minor tweaks and bug fixes.

Once a branch is near finalization does NOT mean a corresponding release will be pushed out, but it does mean that a release COULD come out with many of its branch improvements.

In a way a release would be a leaf off a branch and in the future one leaf could be part of many branches – this is part of the evolution of Android.

Google IO 2009 was a very Android centric developer conference with day long Android sessions and access to Android engineers.

I was lucky to be invited to cover Google IO for GoogleAndBlog as I flew into San Francisco Wednesday May 27th and took a cab directly to the Moscone West Center.

Once there I arrived during the keynote session just before the discussion shifted to Android where they went over some items in the upcoming Donut release such as the phone talking back for turn by turn directions and language translations.