How Nokia's Symbian Move Helps Google

Nokia rocked the wireless industry June 24 with news it would purchase the portion of Symbian, a maker of mobile-phone software, that it didn't already own -- and then give away the software for nothing. The prospect of free software would surely lure users away from competing cell phone software makers including Google, which in the past year threw its hat into the cell phone software ring by spearheading the creation of Android, an operating system for wireless devices. Or so the argument runs.