I’m still absorbing some of the information that was published yesterday on the Google Phone alliance, and I don’t have any sources of “inside” information. My initial feeling is that, while it may take a few years to play out, Google’s strategy of an open-source, software-dominated mobile platform has a good chance of beating Apple’s beautiful-but-closed/controlled strategy. I’ve been using my iPhone fairly happily for the past 4 months, but if I had to summarize it in a phrase, I think it would be: beautiful, but sterile. And I suspect that a characterization of phone products based on Google’s strategy will be: slightly chaotic, slightly blemished, but exciting and creative and independent.

Apple and the iPhone are still a relatively minor player in the global mobile-platform marketplace, so maybe I shouldn’t focus on them so much; even Microsoft, with a 10% market-share for its Windows-Mobile platform, is a relatively small player. Indeed, the best thing about the Google announcement is that it represents a frontal assault on the tightly-controlled, closed-world environment created by the telecommunication carriers.

Let’s face it: does anyone actually like the combination of hardware, software, service and coverage (i.e., signal strength in the various geographies where we use our phones) offered by any of the telecom carriers? I don’t care whether it’s AT&T or Verizon or Sprint or any of the hundreds of other carriers around the world: even if we’re momentarily seduced by their slicks ads and tempting sign-up prices, it’s only a matter of time (often only minutes!) before we find ourselves frustrated and annoyed by a limited hardware device, sluggish and ugly software, lousy service (often provided by a call center on the other side of the world, with well-intentioned tech-support people who can do little more than read a standard script that has nothing to do with the reason for our call), and unpredictable/mediocre coverage.

Of course, you could say the same thing about airlines today: given the combination of packed flights, constant delays at the airport, and lousy service, who has a good word to say about any of the air carriers? No, it’s more a question of which one you happen to hate the most on any particular day. Fortunately, most of the cities to which I want to fly are serviced by three or four carriers; so if airline X has screwed me badly in the recent past, I’ll go out of my way to avoid them, and fly instead on airline Y — until airline Y screws me, at which point I’ll switch to airline Z — or maybe back to X once again. The key point is I don’t have to sign a long-term contract, promising that I’ll always fly X whenever I travel to city A.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the same freedom with our mobile phones?