Following a couple of tweets about an all-hands meeting at Google, Mario Queiroz, Vice President, Product Management at Google, confirmed in a blog-posting on the Google Mobile Blog, that the folks at Google are constantly experimenting with new products and technologies and therefore often ask employees to test these products for quick feedback and suggestions for improvements in a process called "dogfooding". And indeed Queiroz confirmed, that this holiday season, Google is taking dogfooding to a new level when the company recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android.

The purpose of this dogfooding process is, according to Queiroz, "to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe. This means they get to test out a new technology and help improve it". However, Queiroz continued that "because dogfooding is a process exclusively for Google employees, we cannot share specific product details".

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal reports now, that Google will indeed offer an HTC-built Android smartphone directly to consumers and that this device will be market as the (Google) Nexus One.

Now it also looks like that first Nexus One photos made it to (Google's) Picasa (photo service) already. Above, a photo from what is expected to be the the Nexus One. Actually either just a rebranded or unbranded HTC Bravo/HTC Passion. As Engadget reports, several pictures taken with a camera, identified as the HTC Nexus One in the EXIF data, are available at Picasa which confirms that the Nexus One will most likely feature a 5 megapixel camera.

Furthermore it's speculated that the Nexus One will run on Android 2.1 and features a highly customized (non-Android-typical?) user interface that was designed entirely by Google.

Cheers ~ Arne