Android Comes of Age at Google Developer Conference

In 2008, when Google organized its first developers' conference, it gave attendees the first phones to run Android, its open source mobile operating system. Even though Google recently announced plans to close the web store for its Nexus One phone, Android itself is still going strong. "The biggest difference with this conference compared to earlier ones is the sheer amount of interest in the platform," says Harry Tormey, software engineer at Snaptic, which makes a note-taking app for both Android phones and the iPhone. Android developers say they are looking to hear from Google about how to make Android apps better, make money off the platform and deal with the problem of fragmentation with many versions of the OS available on phones currently.