Google's Android: Java and a lot of Money

As promiosed, Google released the Android SDK today. The big news - Android is Java based.  The really, really big news - Google is offering up a ton of money ($10 Million) to developers to program applications for Android.

First, a run down (and don't take this as definitive, I'm still slogging through the documentation)

• Android will run on windows, linux and mac
• Develop in Java on Eclipse
• There's an emulator to test applications right now
• The UI elements are available, but may not be the final version
  

Its pretty clear that Android is a flavor of J2ME, but to say that really takes away from what Android is.  J2ME is simply an sandbox that runs on phone that support it.  In that sandbox, developers can write applications but, they can only control the phone to the extent that the handset maker offers through its APIs.  Android lets developers access to just about everything on the phone.  Kind of like telling someone they have to stay in their hotel room on vacation (J2ME) and giving them free reign of an entire resort (Android).

The bigger news is that Google is willing to put its money where its mouth is.  It's going to give 50 application $25,000 in its design contest. Twenty of those will then get $275,000 or $100,000 to bring the application to market. 

As I noted before, this is not an iPhone killer.  But, it is clearly something that may work.  The fact that Google is willing to subsidize application development for this platform is a good sign.  But, until we actually see a phone that this works on, the success of this effort is still in doubt.