Android-plus-Symbian: Never Say ‘Never’

Nice to see that my colleague Jason Brooks of eWEEK’s esteemed Labs is paying attention. He took immediate issue with my post from earlier today about open source wireless projects Symbian (owned by by Nokia) and Android (an as-yet-unreleased Linux-based mobile operating system owned by Google), and that they might one day merge into a super open source monster.

If this were to happen, the combined economics of such a huge, powerful new organization, backed by two very wealthy companies, would be a force with which to be reckoned. That would be one set up to own the continuously fast-growing mobile device world and save it from proprietary “black hats” like Microsoft, Samsung, Motorola, Qualcomm and others.

Can it happen? Sure it could. Are the chances decent? Probably not; Jason makes good points about overlap and Google having its own agenda and probably not wanting to be bothered.

But if there’s one thing we have learned over the years, it’s this. Don’t ever assume anything won’t happen just because it doesn’t look feasible at the outset. Weirder things have happened.

For a good laugh, take a look at these other proposed mergers, courtesy of FreakingNews.com. Have a great day!