• Bloomberg Businessweek, Friday, March 25, 2011 12:26 PM

Risking it reputation as an open-source crusader, Google says it will delay the distribution of its newest Android source code, dubbed Honeycomb, at least for the foreseeable future, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. "The search giant says the software, which is tailored specifically for tablet computers that compete against Apple's iPad, is not yet ready to be altered by outside programmers and customized for other devices, such as phones."

Unlike its rivals, Google has traditionally made the underlying code for its popular Android operating system publicly available, so anyone could access it and tailor it for use in mobile phones, tablets, television set-top boxes, even automobiles. "It's the throngs of smaller hardware makers and software developers that will now have to wait for the software," Bloomberg Businessweek writes.

"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones."

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