A great Android article

There's a fairly long article on Gizmodo by John Mahoney about Android that's worth reading. To boil it down to its essence, Mahoney's argument is that Android will succeed because 1) It's truly open, 2) It's not tied to a metaphor that just doesn't work well, such as porting the Windows UI to phones, and 3) It will (or at least should) be upgraded on a regular cycle, much like Ubuntu Linux. By comparison, the iPhone has a great UI, but it's limited by what Apple will and won't allow developers to do.

How well Google realizes Android's potential will be determined to a great extent by how open the platform remains: If service providers exercise their abilities to limit the functionality of Android applications, much of the appeal of the platform will be lost.