The New York Times today has a good piece on the man behind the to-be-announced tomorrow, Google Phone, Andy Rubin. The guy has seemingly been everywhere over the past 20+ years, from Apple to WebTV to Danger (makers of the Sidekick) – but naturally it’s his teaming up with Google that could revolutionize an industry.

When the Google Phone project (code-named “Android” – going to android.com sends you to a Google 404 page) is announced tomorrow it’s expected to be a mobile operating system that Google will give away for free to phone makers. Naturally Google would use this system as an ‘in’ to serve up not only its applications to users, but eventually mobile advertisements as well – a market that will no doubt be another multi-billion dollar industry going forward.

Word is that Google has been having talks recently with various mobile companies like Verizon about some kind of deal, but those seem to have come up empty. If Verizon comes up empty once again after missing out on the iPhone, that could look very bad for them. The Google Phone, like the iPhone before it, are the early steps in revolutionizing the mobile industry – if the cellular networks fail to get on board, they will eventually be left in dust; maybe not anytime soon, but 10 years down the line the industry is going to be a lot different – especially if Google wins its bid for the wireless spectrum. They should be paranoid of this ‘Android’.

I’m guessing we see at least one curveball tomorrow from Google as well during the Gphone announcement – something out of left-field that no one has been talking about yet. The fact that we’re a day away from an announcement and many people still seem unsure if the Google Phone is an actual phone or just a software package points to a lot of talk in these rumors, but not a lot of reality.

[UPDATE]: USATODAY.com is reporting that Sprint, Motorola, Samsung, and NTT DoCoMo (Japanese) are a few of the names we’ll be hearing tomorrow as initial partners with Google on the phone.

[UPDATE 2 11/5]: Here’s the official Google announcement of the Open Handset Alliance aka Android (which they’ve trademarked). As expected there is no singular Gphone, rather this open operating system will allow for other companies to create hundreds of Gphones.