Android just another mobile phone OS?

Vamien McKalin on the Android Guys site posts a legitimate question: How truly open will Google's Android OS be? In the wake of last week's SDK flap, the answer may be "not very."

While Android developers were busy complaining about having to wait four months for a new Android SDK, Google actually made a new SDK available, but only to the 50 winners of its Android Developers challenge. This means the rest of Android's developers were left "stranded in the old SDK wilderness for God knows how long," as McKalin puts it. Unfortunately for Google, the announcement of the new SDK mistakenly went to all the developers participating in the challenge, not just the 50 winners. So the developers in the wilderness were further teased, knowing that while the chosen 50 could now work with the new SDK, they weren't worthy enough.

While the errant e-mail is probably just a sign of poor communications on Google's part, it does leave Android's openness to question. Especially since, as McKalin says, market forces as they are today leave Google with little leverage with the carriers. As he says:

I have no doubts that it will be open. But will it be open enough for the end user? Will it be possible for us to remove and add anything we like to an Android phone or will the carriers still reign superior on what we can and cannot do with a device our hard earn cash has bought? Call me naive, but it is difficult to see why carriers would give in to Google and Android unless there is something more sinister at work that we are yet to know about.

Remarks by Sprint's Android lead, where he says the Android OS is nothing special, further underscore the point. With all the hype--and promise--surrounding Android, it would be pretty disappointing if it failed to deliver and became just a me-too OS.