I actually somewhat agree with where you're coming from. Over at http://www.ohadev.com/forum/ someone mentioned that this type of thing is very disruptive to the old model of business, and that the OHA members might even sabotage the project because it's too risky for them to go all in.

I think it's a little tin-foil-hattish to assume that the OHA members will actively disrupt Android's usefulness, but it does seem plausible that they might not fully embrace it. In any case, though, we're not dealing with some hacked together only-for-show alliance here. Google has a hell of a lot more power than any company that's tried this before. Strategically they must feel that this has a decent chance of succeeding, otherwise they wouldn't be trying it, and the simple fact that so many people are paying attention to it means that it's got a pretty good chance of working out.

After all, would _you_ want to piss off Google by dishonestly joining up with a consortium then taking a big dump all over it?

For anyone that's confused, you can read that comment as "Well, we really freaking hope that this thing is a big disaster, and if we could do anything to make sure it fails, we would. But, uh, if it's not, then we're going to have to save face and pretend that we're cool with it, so...yeah. Not ruled out."

Personally, I hope the project succeeds, I'm itching to get into indie mobile game development, and I think Android is the path of least resistance if it works out.

Shameless plug: come over to http://www.ohadev.com to discuss in more detail.

Whatever. Ballmer just likes to yell and say outrageous things, it's kind of his calling card.

Microsoft has nothing to do with this, anyways. Windows Mobile flat out sucks, and nobody in their right mind develops for it hoping to put their stuff on cellphones. Android is essentially trying to create a market where there is none currently (the cell phone software industry is negligible at the moment), and Microsoft will neither profit from nor be hurt very much by it, whether it succeeds or not. The real people to worry about are the phone companies, who do have the ability to crush it.

Keep an eye out: http://www.ohadev.com will have a lot of feedback on the SDK tomorrow, that's where I'll be hanging out to discuss this stuff. Let's hope the SDK is solid.