Google shows off Android capabilities

Google expects to generate revenues via Android by extending the reach of the Internet to handheld phones. Google sells Internet-based ads, applications, appliances and license fees.

"Google does reasonably well on the open Internet. We'd like that model to come to mobile phones," said Gundotra, a former Microsoft executive.

During the keynote, Gundotra emphasized Google's commitment to Web technologies. "At a very high level, Google cares about moving the Web forward. The Web has become the dominant platform of our era," he said.

Company officials also said Google Gears software, which enables interaction between Web applications and the desktop, has been renamed as simply Gears. This is intended to spread the message that the technology is not just for the Google platform.

The company demonstrated a Gears application by MySpace, which used Gears to add search capabilities for its e-mail inbox.

"We don't want MySpace to tell those users to go use a Google product," said Sundar Pinchai, a member of the Gears development team.

Google officials detailed product plans including pricing for the Google App Engine hosted service as well as noting the 1.5 release of Google Web Toolkit, featuring adherence to Java 5 conventions. They also cited the 0.8 release of Google's OpenSocial API , featuring REST capabilities.

Google officials also noted the Apache Shindig project, an open-source implementation of the OpenSocial and Google Gadgets specifications.