OK, so it's not the Gphone most people were hoping for. But what Google announced Monday morning could potentially turn out to be more significant. It's Android, an open development platform for mobile devices. And we've got a video where the Google guys talk about it.Android will be released, in an early version, anyway, on Nov. 12. It will roll out under the auspices of the Open Handset Alliance, which is the 30-vendor group Google has established to help promulgate its vision for an open phone. That handset -- call it the iPhone Apple wished it had thought of -- could hit the market sometime in the second half of 2008.

As widely noted, Google won't sell the thing itself. The phone will probably come by way of T-Mobile in the United States and Orange in Europe.

Google hasn't provided specifics about the phone's operating system. However, as I noted yesterday, it could be Linux. Today's "open" alliance and development platform point a path toward the use of an open-source operating system all the more.

The Android development platform will house the underpinnings of that openness. It will be the glue enabling third-party software providers to offer apps for the Google phone. That should stand the phone in good stead with the numerous consumers who aren't all that crazy with the control-freak approach Apple has taken with iPhone apps.

Here's how Android is described in online FAQ posted today:

"Android is a complete mobile phone software stack. It includes everything a manufacturer or operator needs to build a mobile phone. Android will be made available as open source via the Apache v2 license. Android was designed from the ground up to enable the best user experience possible on a mobile phone. It leverages Web and Internet content to provide advanced services such as mobile mashups."

OK, now for the video, in which a bunch of Google guys, including engineering director Steve Horowitz, chat up Android.