Google Phone or Android Phone?

Ever since the buzz started with the G1 there has been confusion over the name of the operating system… is it a Google Phone or an Android Handset? Well, it’s both. Sort of. Maybe.

The Open Handset Alliance is a group of companies founded by Google with the aim of opening up the mobile phone operating system marketplace to an open source alternative. The alliance came up with Android – a hardware independant operating system that could be built on, edited, changed and mucked around with by anyone – for the benefit of everyone.

Of course, with Google as a big player, the first glimpses of the OS were secretive and often called a Google phone. T-mobile hasn’t exactly helped the confusion by calling it’s first two HTC made Android phones the G1 and the G2.

But, at the end of the day the OS is called Android… Google just had a hand in setting it all up and giving it a push. This year there are several new Android phones being released and the big phone players are getting involved: Samsung, Motorola and possibly LG (rumours at the moment). Maybe we’ll move onto the possibilities of Android being used in handheld PCs and Netbooks in a later post…