Google chimes in on GTalk, Bluetooth removals from Android SDK

So we can rest easy for another night -- and the so can the Bluetooth headsets of would-be Dream owners, knowing they've dodged a bullet and won't be unceremoniously tossed into the compactor in a couple months' time. The removal of Bluetooth APIs for developers in the latest build of the Android SDK stoked fears that the nearly ubiquitous standard would somehow get dropped from the first round of devices, but Google has stepped in with the straight dope to clarify why exactly the references disappeared: Android's developers plumb ran out of time to make it available and fully functional to third parties. Engineer Nick Pelly makes it clear on no uncertain terms that the first devices will support headsets and the like out of the box, but to meet the gold deadline, they had to nix it from the publicly accessible APIs. The good news is that they want to add usable APIs back in with a future, post-1.0 release, but that won't be doing the first round of devs (and buyers) much good.

The story with another yanked API, meanwhile, is a little different. As the name implies, GTalkService was intended to open up Google Talk's XMPP-based framework to applications in such a way that they could be handled like any other message on the device. Cool, yes, but the company's security gurus realized that the functionality opened up a potential can of security worms, noting for instance that a multiplayer game could repurpose a user's Google Talk account for in-game contact, at which point a bunch of random n00bs could suddenly appear on your buddy list. Not cool. Google's verbiage leads us to believe that GTalkService won't be reintroduced any time soon, either, so we're just going to have to get over that one.

[Via Android Community]