It looks like the promised Android Update Alliance that was supposed to unite phone manufacturers and carriers in a pledge to commit to predictable updates for Android phones might be dead before it even had a chance to produce any results.

So the Google Update Alliance was a breath of fresh air. It sounded like everyone would finally come together, streamline their OS update timelines, and stop jerking around their customers. The thing is, while the Google Update Alliance ended up being one of the biggest stories to come out of Google I/O, we’ve heard almost nothing about it since then.

To put it mildly, this doesn’t look encouraging. The original promise wasn’t about a vendor evaluating if it would issue an upgrade, or about letting us know sometime next year when it made a decision. It was that hardware permitting, all Android devices would get OS updates in a reasonable amount of time within the first 18 months. Yet, as we close 2011 and head into 2012, we’re still running into the same confused messaging, empty promises, and delayed announcements that have plagued Android OS updates from the beginning. This means that for all intents and purposes, the Google Android Update Alliance is already dead.

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It looks like the promised Android Update Alliance that was supposed to unite phone manufacturers and carriers in a pledge to commit to predictable updates for Android phones might be dead before it even had a chance to produce any results. So the Google Update Alliance was a breath of fresh air. It sounded like ...