Don’t worry folks, I won’t quit my day job, even with unbelievably innovative and clever post titles like this one. Back to business - The WSJ announced today that Google is close to officially announcing a suite of software that will enable wireless phone makers to make the “Google Phone” available by next year.
As expected, a bundle of Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail will be enabled on the phones. But the more controversial piece is the fact that Google wants the software to be completely open source (including the OS). At first this makes me cringe and conjures up visions of the worlds first pandemic cellphone virus. However, if you think about it, it may just be a good option.
Open source platforms on PCs such as Linux have been successful because the community in effect acts as the “safety net” for the code. That is, the collective would quickly identify and correct these problems as they occur. I may be oversimplifying this (or just naive) but I think this just might work for Google.