Tim Bray, co-inventor of XML and, until recently, Sun employee, has announced in a blog posting "Now A No-Evil Zone", that he has taken up a position at Google as "Developer Advocate" and will be focussing on Android.

Bray says he had long considered Google as a "plausible match" as it is web-centric, works on search and is open-source friendly, but previous approaches had stalled as he did not want to move from Vancouver. With the new position, he will be working remotely from Vancouver, promoting development on and around Google's open source phone platform Android, but notes "There’s nothing that says I’m just doing Android, but it seems that there’s enough Android work to keep a dozen of me busy".

Bray sees Android as the opposite of Apple's "sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers", and refers to Dave Winer's observation that Android is the first-ever platform without a vendor. "It's the only kind of platform I want to help build" says Bray, who wants to prove Apple's approach wrong. He adds "The tragedy is that Apple builds some great open platforms; I’ve been a happy buyer of their computing systems for some years now and, despite my current irritation, will probably go on using them."

(djwm)