This is a strategically brilliant cooperation. With Nokia now owning Symantec and turning it open source (see Wall Str Journal++), this is mutually beneficial move for both companies BOTH technologically and business wise.
TMobile is not a major player in the US. Gphone will give it a lot of credibility, visibility and market share. So it stands to reason that GPhone would get a much better deal out of TMobile than other US carrier ??? Verizon, AT&T (ya right), ... Moreover, the open architecture of Android give TMobile a technical leg up on competition -- even if temporally a limited window per tech.
Long term, Google has a huge search and marketing market share in the US. TMobile's European presence is a great move on the part of Google to get a better foothold in Europe for search and mobile marketing -- web use.
European consumers are more savvy than their US counterparts in the use of the mobile. I suspect that may be the case in terms of the development as well. Regardless, this will open the European developer market to Google. Applications for Symbian, for instance, will get translated over to Android and vice versa (TMobile will want to support multiple platforms close to one another).
With more and more of G's revenue coming from overseas, and the growing switch to mobile (from search and commerce to localization and payment services) Google has an excellent pattern for future growth. See iTouch, iPhone use in the US for instance. A lot of the business will translate to non-mobile too.
Hardware tech comparisons is another issue which I have not looked into.
There are also no collusion or monopoly problems. There is no shortage of carriers in the US or Europe. Besides, Apple and AT&T cracked that precedence. The question is when GPhone intro to EU, the G3-G4 which should not be a big issue, and then the penetration to market Asian markets (or what of it is available) particularly India. I suspect the later will follow iPhone.
Got to own one, I guess :-)
Just an aside... when tech competitiveness drives and combines with the business case one gets progress and best of both worlds. As I mentioned there is currently no monopolistic dominance issues. The question is leapfrogging one another. What will Research In Motion, MS, Nokia, and Motorola's response will be (not to mention Orange, Verizon Virgin... etc) . I doubt it will all be market focus -- not even for RIM.
My guess is that we are going to move into -- or revisit if you prefer -- service first and eventually computational ubiquity.
