The Wall Street Journal tweaks the hype for Google’s supposedly hours-away mobile announcement with a boilerplate of speculation about how Google’s open platform will bust open the wireless industry by igniting “a race among Silicon Valley developers, long shut out of the wireless industry, to come up with new applications for cellphones,” like HDTV, multiplayer mobile games, actual multi-tasking, and other exciting, previously impossible coolness. Bonus rumormongering: Sprint and T-Mobile name-checked again as Google’s probable partners.

Helpful chart the WSJ whipped up, no? Other possibilities include easier sharing of music, photos and video with friends across carrier networks, as well as better internet access and utilization—you need it for the ads, after all.

The wild, wonderful world of millions of innovative, useful apps on millions of open devices that we’re tantalized with for three-quarters of the piece gets doused with a nice, healthy dose of cold water at the end, however, by the hard reality that developers will still have to conform to carriers’ rules “if they want them to work seamlessly on the most popular networks.” So we’re probably looking at baby steps in the industry rather than full-on ¡revolución! But hey, it’s a start.

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