Google will give $10 million to the developers who build the best applications for Android, the open source platform Google designed for building mobile phones. Google says it hopes to spark innovation with the so-called Android Developer Challenge, announced today concurrently with the release of Android. The software development kit is now available for download on the Android site.

While Google and its Open Handset Alliance partners would have us believe that it's all about the customer, the Android open source mobile platform is as much about preventing Microsoft, Symbian and Palm from taking up the top position in the mobile operating system space.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News about Google showed off its new brainchild last week:a smartphone design in collaboration with its Android partners, Taiwan's handset maker HTC, and the wireless carrier T-Mobile USA Latest News about T-Mobile.

Online retailers have begun to flog HTC Google Android phones to Australian consumers, with the first copies having turned up on the Australian website of auction giant eBay site, although Australian telcos don't seem to have prepared for the imports.

As expected Google released their Android Software Development Kit (SDK) today. It provides all of the tools needed to start creating applications that run on the next generation mobile operating system, and Google is getting their checkbooks out to help ensure that Android won’t be a flop…

Google could be heading for a showdown with Sun over the way Android, Google's new mobile phone software platform, handles Java.

Google wasn't the only company announcing new Android-based devices this week. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, several handset and mobile device manufacturers also announced new models and partnerships with mobile carriers for their Android devices, ranging from various mobile phones and tablets, to eBook readers.

I've been following Android since its inception in November 2007. I'm referring to the open source Linux-based software platform for mobile devices developed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance.Everyone was talking about Android back then that I even made a post about it and defended it against a negative comment made by a well-known blogger.

There's been a flurry of excitement about open source in the mobile world in the past few weeks, what with Google's Open Handset Alliance and its associated Android software platform. In all the hype (some deserved, some not), people seem to have forgotten one Very Big Problem in mobile...