Google is managing to turn the traditional cellular environment that we know — but may or may not love — on its head.

By now you likely know that last week, Google unveiled Android, a Linux-based mobile operating platform with the potential to become a universal development environment for wireless devices and PCs alike. It has the backing of the 34-company-strong Open Handset Alliance (OHA), also announced last week, which boasts such industry heavyweights as HTC, Motorola, Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile.

OHA members have all said they will work together to build Android applications, and HTC is currently slated to deliver a commercial Android handset in the second half of 2008.

The Android and OHA announcements follow Google’s fairly successful attempts last summer to convince the FCC to include some open-access provisions in the forthcoming 700MHz spectrum auction rules. Google also has indicated that it will bid on at least some of that spectrum. Depending on the outcome, Google could well upset the mobile WAN applecart in unpredictable ways.

“Most exciting is the prospect of new business models,” said Quentin Hardy, Silicon Valley bureau chief at Forbes.com. Hardy was a panelist at a meeting last week of the Wireless Communications Alliance, a nonprofit group that meets to exchange education and ideas about Silicon Valley’s role in the wireless industry.

“The incumbents are slaves to their historical business models,” Hardy said. “[New models might emerge to] get as many applications as possible out there.”

Co-panelist Mike Thelander, CEO of wireless research and consulting firm Signals Research Group, mused that those applications could range from the traditional to the unthought-of.

“Google technology partners could detach the applications from phones and put them in other devices. You could have voice communications in microwave ovens or in Gameboys,” he said.

“Or in dog collars,” chimed in wireless guru and co-panelist Andy Seybold, principal of consultancy Andrew Seybold Inc.

Seybold worries about how mobile networks, which use finite and shared bandwidth, will be managed in an “open” environment—a term yet to be strictly defined. However, he acknowledges that “Even if [Google] were to walk away today, we’re going to have a better wireless world because Google got involved.”

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.