Either someone at Google has a sense of humour or they really are out to make robots of us all. Let’s hope the former is the reason for calling their latest venture Android. This is the apparent reality behind all the long running rumours of a Google Phone. In fact it appears to be an attempt to bring an open standard operating system to enable extensible gadgets and capabilities for internet-capable phones.

Such a system would have great attractions for a company that wants to put itself into every aspect of communications and potential advertising media, but the move must have a lot of phone manufacturers wondering what their long term chances of survival are. Can any of them afford to go it alone or is it a case or collaborate or die. Or will Google just take over anyway? It’s also another battleground for Microsoft who have been trying to push the use of their own mobile operating system in a market that currently has quite a few of them.