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Multitouch support was dropped from the Android platform, and therefore the T-Mobile G1, after Apple requested it not be included. That’s the latest rumor, apparently confirmed by an unnamed Android team member, who described the arrangement as an attempt by Google to avoid the IP aggression we’ve recently seen between Apple and Palm. While the G1’s capacitive touchscreen certainly recognizes multitouch input - as recent hacks have demonstrated - and earlier builds of Android code included what’s believed to be Google-written, but subsequently disabled, multitouch support, the functionality did not ship in the released device. At the time, this was...

Google Hands Out 'Dogfood' as Christmas Bonus By Owen Thomas, 11:22 AM on Mon Dec 22 2008, 30,967 views Groans are issuing from the Googleplex over this year's holiday bonus. In the past, the search engine paid cash — as much as $20,000 or $30,000 per Googler, we hear. This year? A cell phone. Oh, but not just any cell phone: A version of the G1 currently sold for $179.99 by T-Mobile, which runs Google's Android operating system. Android is the fruit of Google founders' Larry Page and Sergey Brin's strange obsession with the wireless market, launched in a fit...

The first smartphone based on Google's Android marries a sophisticated HTC handset with software features that outmaneuver iPhone On October 22, T-Mobile will reap the benefits of its founding membership in the Open Handset Alliance. Through an exclusive partnership with Google and Asian handset manufacturer HTC, the T-Mobile G1 will become the first shipping mobile device based on the Android platform. Google and company have worked hard to make the T-Mobile G1 both affordable and easy to use. And while it's too soon to know how far developers will take the open source Android platform, we now know what to...