Google borrows from Apple with Jan. 5 Android event

All's fair in tech and gadgets.

The Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas in January, is arguably the most important tech conference of the year, with all the major manufacturers providing the tech press with a look at what they're releasing in the year to come.

In 2007, Apple thumbed its nose at CES, having Steve Jobs give a keynote announcing the iPhone at the Macworld conference in San Francisco. CES that year may have been cool (Who can forget seeing ASIMO run?) but every product announced seemed to carry with it an asterisk:

* This is not the iPhone, and it's not as cool.

Word this morning of an "Android event" at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., on the same day that press previews begin at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, has many thinking back to 2007.

The event – pretty much guaranteed to see the release of the first-ever "real" Google phone, the Nexus One – will likely draw all the big names in the tech press, leaving CES to play second-fiddle – again.

Details on the Nexus One have been leaking since early this month, when Google employees began testing the phone. Leaked specifications and video show that the phone forgoes a physical keyboard in favor of a touchscreen, and that it's a touch slimmer and lighter than the iPhone.

Also leaked this morning were details on how the Nexus One will be distributed – at least at first. Google will sell the phone directly, on the Web only, and for an as-yet undisclosed price, according to Boy Genius Report. Internal documents from T-Mobile show that Google will sell and support the phone, but that T-Mobile will provide the wireless service. That confirms early speculation that the Nexus One would alter the traditional wireless model, where wireless providers subsidize the cost of devices in order to entice users to sign up for service contracts.

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We'll be watching the Google Nexus One developments closely. Have something to say? Leave a comment, and catch up with us on Twitter.