This morning Google had a phone open phone conference and made the much anticipated announcement that they along with 33 other companies are starting the Open Handset Alliance. The first and main project of the newly formed alliance is called Android, an open development platform for mobile handsets. The ultimate goal for Google with this is to overall make a better, more usable phone with more features where consumers will benefit, and of course to show advertisements on it where Google will also benefit.

Eric Schmidt was present on the call leading things off, with a number of other captains of industry including Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, Peter Chou from HTC and Ed Zander from Motorola. The members of the Open Handset Alliance include some big names like Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, eBay, Intel, NVIDIA and many others. Some notable big names we’re not seeing on the member list are Microsoft, Apple, AT&T and Verizon.

Google has plans to announce the highly rumored “Google Phone” today which is likely going to be an open platform, Linux-based operation system that runs on mobile phones and is catered to Google applications rather than being an actual specific handset. The latest list of speculated partners for providing the phone include Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and NTT DoCoMo although these are just rumored partners as everyone involved with the deal has kept very quiet about it at Google’s request. Verizon and AT&T have both had talks with Google but reportedly are still leery of the Google-centric plans.

The new Google Phone system is expected to be Linux based with the open source Java development platform laid on top with tools that Google would “give away” to developers to allow them to openly create applications to run on the G-Phone’s platform. The phone has is also being rumored to provide internet access at speeds as fast as you might find on your home computer, but all navigation would be through Google, of course.

In what is the most solid information we’ve seen so far amidst a slew of rumors surrounding Google and the potential of a Google Phone, today some reliable sources of Reuters and the WSJ have reported that Google is planning an announcement. Sources say that Google plans to unveil plans for their own mobile phone operation system in mid-November with possible plans to roll it out with an existing mobile phone carrier sometime next year.

For a number of months rumors ran that Google had plans of making its own mobile phone but later the information turned to Google just making mock-ups of mobile phones that would run a Google operating system for an example to carriers and manufacturers. The latest talks is that Google is looking for a carrier who will bring a mobile device to market with the Google OS on it, possibly offering the device or service for free or at a very low cost in turn for users putting up with advertisements on the phone.

The secret to competing with the iPhone may just be a low price/low tech approach. Last week, Google acquired and got all social with the Finnish start-up Jaiku, holder of key Short Message Service patents. And though Google isn’t talking, we know they want advertisers to sponsor Google search results on mobile devices just like on Internet-connected PCs.

Jaiku is of course, key to their strategy. In addition, they also acquired the mobile social network Zingku and expanded “Google SMS,” which is a free service that sends answers to texters with questions.

Rumors and speculation are getting heavy regarding information on the Google phone, and this time CrunchGear has dug up some reported “facts” about the device and its functionality.

According to the information from GigaOM, the supposed first Google phone might not be quite as cool or fancy as many of the photos floating around the net have depicted, and we’ve seem other rumors that it may be as cheap as $100 once released.

While Google might not ever really get into the hardware game directly with their own Google phone, according to the WSJ they are definitely putting a fair amount of time and money in that specific direction. According to the report, Google has put not millions but hundreds of millions of dollars into its cell phone project.

Google has worked on developing mobile phone prototypes and worked out specifications with manufactures like LG to likely come up with a partnership in providing …