T-Mobile today launched the G1, the first phone loaded with Google's mobile operating system, Android. (Just don't call it a "Googlephone"!) Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page showed up late to the press conference and Brin began his speech with an excuse: "We had to rush here a little bit today from the Google Transit launch, and, uh, you know with all the streets being shut down and all, I don't think wheels were the best way to go." The pair winged it from there on.

Brin told the crowd how tinkering with the G1 gives him pleasure: "It's just very exciting for me as a computer geek to have a phone I can play with and modify." Page mostly stood there with a silly grin on his face.

Contrast the willy-nilly performance with Apple CEO Steve Jobs's meticulously planned iPhone announcements. It serves as a convenient illustration of the differences between the Apple's mobile strategy and Google's. Apple's iPhone offers millions of consumers a simple, structured experience — just as Jobs's bullet-point keynotes focus on marketable sound bites. The G1 is an open, developer-friendly phone that — like Brin and Page's slapdash appearance — thousands of geeks will appreciate and few consumers will bother to decipher.

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