Not necessarily just Google, but a lot of techies in general. Perhaps not in the meat market software firms (and other then how pervasive it is, I wouldn’t say that Google falls into this), but in a general sense, there’s a particular joy in what is being done that leads to more investment in the work that people of a certain bent are doing. So in the name of expanding references:

The Wikipedia condensed synopsis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic

And, a book:
http://www.amazon.com/Hacker-Ethic-Pekka-Himanen/dp/0375505660

The basic premise being that there’s a new Protestant ethic in town.

For a philosophy that believes in total self-interest, it’s weird that economics assumes that firms will act in ways that benefit the market rather than benefit themselves in the short term.

The revolutionary part comes more from the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) that sprung up and its part in all this. Cellular phone technology (and the operating systems that they’ve been built upon) have created a very insular environment where the service providers dictate in large part what consumers have available.

The software available for the iPhone (as an example) goes through an exhaustive vetting process that seeks to limit what becomes available to users. The positive spin thrown on this is that consumers get the best software for a particular function. The less then up front portion is that it allows Apple to prevent developers from improving on functionality that they have staked out for themselves. Take Adobe Flash for example. The rules that Apple has laid out for acceptance of software into the App store categorically would deny Flash a place on the iPhone. Any future presence of Flash on iPhones would require a special exemption from Apple. But is this an exemption that they’d grant? As a means of making more web content accessible, it would be a good play. But when you consider that some of that web content includes sites such as Hulu.com, Apple stands to lose iTunes revenue by opening that door.

For more on the OHA: http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_faq.html

Whether this is a revolution or merely a blip will rely on how far the OHA can take Android. As a global technology, it seems very sustainable (one of the members of the OHA is China Mobile Communications Corporation). The real question will lie in how effective it’s push is in the US, where Sprint and T-Mobile (the third and fourth largest carriers) are the carriers enrolled in the OHA. For things to really get shaken up, AT&T Wireless and Verizon will have to come on board at some point.

AT&T Wireless probably has the largest vested interest in not adopting, with the current exclusivity agreement with Apple.