Today marks exactly three years since Google and a slew of hardware and carrier partners officially announced the Android mobile operating system . It was almost a year after that before the first major Android ( ) handset was released – the G1 on T-Mobile – and not until late 2009 that the Motorola Droid , complete with an aggressive ad campaign, catapulted the platform into the mainstream consciousness. Today, a wide variety of manufacturers are producing Android phones, and they’re sold on all major carriers in the U.S. In fact, in aggregate they’re now outselling those running on Apple’s iOS , with recent numbers putting Google ( ) ’s share of the mobile operating system market at nearly 20%. With variants of the Android operating system now being extended to other platforms like tablets , Internet-connected televisions and even automobiles , we can only see it getting more pervasive in the years ahead. Three years ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Our vision is that t...