PR Week Echo Columns

Google let off a rocket of its own on 5th November with the announcement of the 30-strong Open Handset Alliance (OHA). In a move guaranteed to dampen this week's UK launch of the iPhone, Google went "head to head with Apple" (Daily Telegraph, 5 Nov). The OHA would use an open-source software platform called Android to "bring the internet into cell phones in a very cool way" according to Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms (Daily Mail, 5 Nov).

Rubin's comment was a welcome relief to the jargon overload that accompanied the announcement, together with "a press release that has a bullshit score near the top of the scale" (Guardian Unlimited, 5 Nov). It put to bed "months of breathless speculation" about the imminent arrival of the so-called Gphone, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt wouldn't "foreclose any options in the future" (both Hemscott.com, 6 Nov). For billions of mobile phone users "the move looks set to drive down both the cost of handsets and accessing the web on the go" (The Sun, 6 Nov). This pleased most commentators, with the exception of rival Symbian's strategy chief John Forsyth: "If Google was not involved the industry would have just yawned and rolled over" (Reuters, 5 Nov).