If John C. Dvorak, love him deeply though I do, were a field goal kicker he would be able to punt hte “pigskin” for at least a couple of miles, and not even break a sweat. He is not, though. He is a pundit and likely the crankiest. He did, in fact, found the Cranky Geeks. JD, however, often goes off half cocked, and this time its in relation to Google’s admittedly inane Google Phone announcement from earlier this week.

For some back story, Google announced that they had started the Open Handset Alliance and already had 34 partners drooling over it. The reality is that we won’t see anything realy interesting for at least a year and it probably won’t do anything different that what most phones do today. In fact, I doubt it will surpass the iconic iPhone, either. Its not even really a phone, per se. Its an OS with a lot of Google-related stuff in it.

Yes, John. This is not awe-inspiring. Its a real yawn fest, but JD gets way off track, seemingly reveling in the bile he spits at Google who, from his perspective, appears to be driving itself into a brick wall at top speed. The sad thing is that JD is very wrong on a number of subjects he cites in his anger-laced piece at PC Magazine. I won’t go into them in detail as I’d rather you read it yourself, but here are a few choice ones:

• He doesn’t clarify that the Google Phone is not an actual phone, its a reference design which Google has peddled to its partners. Its up to the partners to make their own phones work with the software.
• People do not primarily use the iPhone as a pocket picture album. Everyone I see with an iPhone has it up to their ear.
• There are Google fanboys and addicts. There out there. You just need to ask.
• Orkut, despite it only being hot in Brazil, is far from dead. All you’d need to do to check on this is click on the More link when you are logged into Google.
• There are a huge number of Windows Mobile (neo Pocket PC) developers who have created a vast library of programs for the portable devices.

I love you, John. Always will. Probably because I don’t know you personally. However, it would benefit your argument if you simply fact-checked some of these things before barreling off on them.

So, what do I think of Google’s initiative? I think its bunk and that they were stupid to announce it a year early. Now they’ve given their competition ample opportunity to collect themselves and dash it before any GPhone actually hits the market. Just because you sign NDAs with your partners, don’t think that someone like Nokia won’t be able to get a copy of your SDK. In fact, search the popular Torrent sites a week after Google announces they’ve shipped it to developers.

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