Hollywood Don’t Know Googily About Android

Surprisingly TechCrunch and others on Sunday July 13 ran with the misinterpretation provided by Dan Cox of the Hollywood Reporter regarding statements made by Google execs at the Sun Valley Media Conference in Idaho last week regarding a Google branded phone.

Dan wrote ,”The trio of Google execs also used the opportunity to talk about the inroads the company is making with its own branded mobile phone as a replacement for the iPhone.”

Mainstream lack of knowledge per differentiating Google’s Android from a mobile software to an actual Google made phone is part in parcel why I started Google And Blog.   This is what I believe caused the Hollywood Reporter’s confusion as pointed out well by Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider.

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb actually followed up with Google and got the facts whereby they replied to her pointing out that it was simply a misunderstanding by one of the reporters in the audience, assumably Mr. Cox.

My feeling with the information I have is that Google will certainly brand the phones made by others with their logo, similar to when one purchases a laptop from Dell or Acer that uses Windows software which then has a branding label of Microsoft put on it.

As far as Google manufacturing phones in the future, that may not be such a great idea after they providing refrigerators to the businesses that received over a million referral clicks via AdWords in 2006 as there are reports many are not working now.

The users experimenting with Google’s Android mobile software are now even more infuriated with not having an updated SDK since March.

Adding insult to the injury of waiting for the next release was the rash of emails received by the losers of the Android Developer Challenge from Google about downloading the new version 84853 Android SDK, which can ONLY be accessed by the 50 winners.

David McLaughlin at Google recently apologized for sending these emails stating it was sent to the WRONG list.

Zach Hobbs of Hello Android emailed me stating, “I think it’s sad that there isn’t currently a public SDK available. I have a feeling that somehow it’s being dictated by “outside forces”, which could be an OEM or wireless provider.”

“I have sensed frustration coming from more than one Google employee, and of course there is a lot of frustration being voiced in the community. I can’t wait for the initial phones/carriers/launch date/app store to be announced so all this ‘beating around the bush’ and secretiveness can be put behind us, and hopefully the community will quickly forget how it was being treated and get behind android again.”

Nicolas Gramlich AKA PlusMinus, the operator of the independent Android Development Community message boards, started this all off with his petition for both more information and release cycles of Android’s SDK, recently tried to put a softer touch to his request by writing, “I didn’t want to depreciate the work of the Android Dev Team or anyone else.”

Speaking for Google And Blog, my personal sense is that Google will present an olive branch fairly soon as both a face saving and community building effort by expanding the latest Android SDK release to a wider community beyond just the 50 winners of the Android Development Challenge.