What is Android ?
Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased byGoogle, and lately by the “Open Handset Alliance“. It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.
Who is behind Android?
Google, which is a leading player in the initiative. The Open Handset Alliance is an organization of approximately 47 organizations committed to bringing a better‚ and open‚ mobile phone to market. This group includes members like Sprint, T-Mobile, Intel, Broadcom, Motorola, Samsung, Google, eBay, amongst others. A quote taken from their website says it best, Android was built from the ground up with the explicit goal to be the first open, complete, and free platform created specifically for mobile devices.
The Open Handset Alliance released the Google Android SDK on November 12th, 2007. The impact was unbelievable, almost every IT/programming-related news-page dumped a news-post about the SDK release – the Google Groups  was overwhelmed with over 2000 Messages within the first two Days. The idea of the Android Platform was and still is amazing and is, of course, attracting more and more programmers every day. Especially the open architecture based on Intents and the possibility to replace even the Home-application grant a really large amount of flexibility to the whole platform.
The weeks and months before Google released the Android SDK there had been a lot of rumors about a so-called GPhone. It was said to be a mobile device manufactured by Google providing free communication by showing context-sensitive advertisements to the user on the device itself.
But on November 5th, 2007 Andy Rubin (Google Director of Mobile Platforms) announced: ‘Android’ is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. Google within the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) delivers a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. Major news sites grabbed the discomforts of some developers who said that Android is full of bugs and heavily lacks documentation. But the majority says that Android is not buggier than any other software at this stage.
