SERGEY BRIN: Hi, welcome to Mountain View, California.
I'm speaking here at Google's headquarters, and I'd like to
tell you about something I'm really excited about.
It's called Android, and it's a new open source operating
system and software platform for mobile phones.
Just like I learned how to write great services and
software upon free tools for the web like Linux and GNU,
now with Android you'll be able to do the exact same
things on mobile phones.
The software's all free, the source is completely
available, and we expect great new powerful applications to
be developed on it.
The SDK is being released right now, and you can
download it.
And to show you some of the highlights and some of the
applications we've already developed, here's Steve.
STEVE HOROWITZ: You've probably been hearing a little
bit about the G phone lately.
I'm here to tell you there is, actually, no G phone.
Instead, I'd like to introduce you to the Android platform.
This is a platform we hope will enable people to create
thousands of G phones.
The first device I'd like to show you today is a prototype
that I've been living with for about the past six months,
because in order to create a great product you actually
have to live with it.
This particular device is running a full version of the
Android software stack that has all the functionality you
would expect in a basic phone.
Here's an example the home screen.
This is a place where you have access to all of your favorite
applications, such as your browser, maps, or contacts.
If you want to call somebody just type their
name and hit dial.
And I'm calling my friend Erin.
Of course, one of the things that we built into the
software development kit is the ability to interact and
integrate applications with one another.
So another example using contacts, let's say I want to
find out where Erin lives.
I simply go and type her name, and when I bring up her
contact and select her address it'll take me right to the
maps application.
And it's going to zoom right in to show
me where Erin lives.
If I select see on the map we notice that she lives on
Amphitheater Parkway, but maybe I'm not quite sure where
that is, so I want to zoom out a little bit to see what
freeway that might be close to.
There we can see that it's near the highway 101.
Now if I go back to the home page, one of the other things
I want to show you is the ability for devices on using
the Android platform to receive notifications.
For example, here I've just received notification from my
friend Lexi that says pizza sounds good.
That must be what she wants for dinner.
You notice that it first showed up at the top of the
screen and it told me the contents of that message.
If I want to go and read that message all I have to do is
navigate up and you can see there's my notification from
Lexi, says pizza sounds good.
If I want to reply I just hit the enter key and I can go
into my text messaging application, say great, and
away we go.
Sounds like we're having pizza for dinner tonight.
The next device I'd like to show you is a more high end
prototype that includes advanced features such as high
speed 3G networking, accelerated 3D graphics, and
touch screen.
Let me show you the browser application.
Our web browser is based on the open source web kit, the
industry's standard these days.
It's the one that allows you to see web pages just as they
would appear on your desktop.
Another thing that you'll notice about a web browser is
that it's loading over the fast 3G data network.
This device is capable of accessing the internet at 3G
speeds and loading webpages quite fast.
Now the page is loaded here and we're zoomed in a little
bit, so if I want to see more of the page I can simply grab
it and pan around a little bit.
And if I want to see the page in its full glory I can simply
zoom out and see it just as it would appear on my desktop.
We also have a rich visual history for a browser.
Go in here, and I can look at the history for my browser and
I can see all the sites that I've visited recently.
The application I'd like to show you is global time.
This shows you the rich graphical powers of the
android platform, and in this case it's using the 3D open
GLES to render a globe here and allow me to very easily
spin it with my finger.
I can also play with the earth while it's spinning around.
The Android graphics APIs allow you to very easily mix
3D and 2D graphics.
Next I'd like to show you some of the advanced 3D hardware
capabilities of this prototype using Quake.
Any application that is written to the Android open
GLS APIs will be able to take full advantage of any hardware
acceleration.
Now I'd like to show you the maps application.
I happen to be here at the city of San Francisco.
Using the touching capabilities of this device I
can pan around the city of San Francisco and watch those map
tiles load for me at 3G speeds.
One of the benefits of the Android platform is that we
build in basic functionality like map views, so your
application doesn't have to reinvent all functionality in
maps if you want to build something on top of it.
Here I am at The Embarcadero in street view, starting from
wherever I was on maps.
If I want to, I can simply take my finger and I can move
that image around, and I can pan around and see what The
Embarcadero looks like, or I can also zoom in.
That was just a preview of some of the things the Android
platform can do.
We can't wait to see what developers will
come up with next.
SERGEY BRIN: Welcome back.
I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the applications we've
built already, but the best applications are not here yet.
That's because they're going to be written by you and many
other developers just like you.
We like to reward these developers and to recognize
them as much as possible, so we've set aside $10 million
dollars which we're going to give away to the people who
develop the best applications using Android.
We're looking forward to seeing some really great apps,
ones which are innovative, make use of the great
functionality available in Android and on mobile phones,
and things that are really original that haven't been
seen before.
I look forward to seeing all of your work.