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The History of Android Development

The History:
Android.com: The Escape
Fast-forward to June of 2002. Someone apparently bought or otherwise acquired the Android.com domain and set up a cryptic placeholder page of sorts.

Android.com: The Film Era
By September of '02, a film and television development company called AndroidCreative had set up a site at Android.com. According to its page, the company -- which also refers to itself simply as "ANDROID," stylized in all caps -- worked to "create small and medium budget content that possessed big budget appeal."

Android.com: Digital Construction Begins
Just three short months later, in December of 2002, Android.com transformed again. This time, the site featured a sparse design with a man's silhouette and the phrase "a digital construction company."By the following July, the owner had expanded the site to include links to what appear to be Web design samples (though it's hard to say for sure). The new Android.com site offered an apology for its ongoing construction -- construction that, at least in this incarnation, was never completed.

Android.com: Hello, Andy
Finally, in April of 2004, Andy Rubin -- head honcho of the Android we know and love today -- showed up on the site. Rubin started using the Android.com domain as a personal Web page of sorts, featuring links to various projects, photos, and other items of interest.

At this time, it's worth noting, Rubin's "work" link pointed to the website for Danger -- the Sidekick-developing company he co-founded and remained at through part of 2004.

Android.com: A Brainstorm
That May, Rubin ditched the personal page for a cryptic image of a metallic man with the top of his head exposed. The only text on the page said "Android.com" and provided an email address for contact.

 An updated version of the page appeared in June; this time, if you clicked the head, you'd get a curious cartoon about unproductive ants. Those crawly little fellows do love their lounging.

Android.com: The Google Map Adventure
Next up: April of 2005. Four months before Google would acquire Android -- Rubin's then-small startup -- Android.com changed briefly to a series of simple Google Maps. One showed Seattle, one showed Boston, and one showed Palo Alto.

That play button at the bottom-right? It was an embedded MP3 (via Flash, naturally) of "All Robots Report to the Dance Floor." In case you aren't up on your obscure mid-90s industrial rock, that's an instrumental song by a group called Servotron -- a "science fiction-influenced band," according to Wikipedia, that was active from 1995 to 1999.

The broken link next to the video appears to have been a logo of some sort.

Android.com: Meet Andy's Robot
In December '05, four months after Android's acquisition by Google, Rubin'sAndroid.com domain shifted back to his personal page design. This time, however, the link for "work" led to a page filled with business cards showcasing Rubin's work history (and a few jokes as well -- look closely at the Apple cards). At the top of the page sat a large enigmatic question mark; clicking it would take you to bajobs.com, a job search site.

Interestingly, the business card page wasn't actually part of Android.com. Instead, it lived at a domain called robot.net. The same applied to the home page link labeled "me"; it led to a photo at robot.net of Rubin standing on the beach and using a phone. The HTML code of the page held another subtle joke: The title attribute of the image was set as "nerd."

Android.com: The Modern Era
In April of 2008, Android.com started redirecting users to the site of the Open Handset Alliance(OHA). That October -- the month the first Android phone launched -- a new standalone site emerged. It showed the Android logo and lettering we all know today, along with introductions to the new operating system and what it could do. "Android will enable a richer, more powerful user experience on mobile phones," the site promised. The following February, a more robust site came online, showing off popular applications and offering a more in-depth look at the platform's features and capabilities.

Android.com: Footnotes
So whatever became of robot.net? The last archived version of the site was captured in May of 2008. It shows Rubin's personal page -- more or less the same one that existed at Android.com in the 2004-2005 era. These days, the robot.net domain is no longer active. Registry records, however, indicate the name is still owned by Rubin -- and registered all the way through 2020.

Let us look at how Android arrived on the Mobile OS landscape. 
Mobile phones use a variety of operating systems such as Symbian OS, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Mobile Linux, iPhone operating system (based on Mac OS X), Moblin (from Intel), and many other proprietary operating systems. So far no single operating system has become the de facto standard. The available APIs and environments for developing mobile applications are too restrictive and seem to fall behind when compared to desktop frameworks. This is where Google comes in. The Android platform promised openness, affordability, open source code, and a high-end development framework.

Google acquired the startup company Android Inc. in 2005 to start the development of the Android Platform The key players at Android Inc. included Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White.

In late 2007, a group of industry leaders came together around the AndroidPlatform to form the Open Handset Alliance Some of the alliance’s prominent members are as follows:

• Sprint Nextel
• T-Mobile
• Motorola
• Samsung
• Sony Ericsson
• Toshiba
• Vodafone
• Google
• Intel
• Texas Instruments

Part of the alliance’s goal is to innovate rapidly and respond better to consumer needs, and its first key outcome was the Android Platform. Android was designed to serve the needs of mobile operators, handset manufacturers, and application developers. The members have committed to release significant intellectual property through the open source Apache License, Version 2.0.

The Android SDK was first issued as an “early look” release in November 2007. In September 2008, T-Mobile announced the availability of T-Mobile G1, the first Smartphone based on the Android platform. A few days after that, Google announced the availability of Android SDK Release Candidate 1.0. In October 2008, Google made the source code of the Android platform available under Apache’s open source license.
When Android was released, one of its key architectural goals was to allow applications to interact with one another and reuse components from one another. This reuse not only applies to services, but also to data and the user interface (UI). As a result, the Android platform has a number of architectural features that keep this openness a reality.

Android has also attracted an early following because of its fully developed features to exploit the cloud-computing model offered by web resources and to enhance that experience with local data stores on the handset itself. Android’s support for a relational database on the handset also played a part in early adoption.
In late 2008 Google released a handheld device called Android Dev Phone 1 that was capable of running Android applications without being tied to any cell phone provider network. The goal of this device (at an approximate cost of $400.00) was to allow developers to experiment with a real device that could run the Android OS without any contracts. At around the same time, Google also released a bug fix, version 1.1 of the OS that is solely based on version 1.0. In releases 1.0 and 1.1 Android did not support soft keyboards, requiring the devices to carry physical keys. Android fixed this issue by releasing the 1.5 SDK in April 2009, along with a number of other features, such as advanced media-recording capabilities, widgets, and live folders.

In September 2009 came release 1.6 of the Android OS and, within a month,Android 2.0 followed, facilitating a flood of Android devices in time for the 2009 Christmas season.