Five Years Ago: Google Buys Android

Android (www.android.com) has operated under a cloak of secrecy, so little is known about its work. Rubin & Co. have sparingly described the outfit as making software for mobile phones, providing little more detail than that. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones.

It's a theme that I've hit more than once in my blogging, but it bears repeating: Android Matters. I believe it will succeed Windows as the platform most people use to do their computing and online communications. And because it is Linux without the X Window System ball-and-chain, it will become what Ubuntu can only aspire to be: Linux for ordinary people.

I just got a shiny new Samsung Vibrant, but I'm keeping my old G1, for the same reason that one might hang onto an original Apple I, IBM PC, or first-generation iPod: it's an historical artifact, the first look we had at the shape of things to come.