Google is already in the habit of giving its code away to third party developers, capitalising on the fact that while it's not making money directly from systems such as the Android platform, the rich development community adds massive value to the Google brand as a whole.

The internet search giant has now decided to release several of its key Javascript application development tools as open source, including Google Mail, Google Docs and Google Maps, allowing developers to create a new range of powerful web applications.

"By enabling and allowing developers to use the very same tools that Google uses, we hope that they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really, really fast. That's our primary motive in getting these tools outside to the global community," explains product manager Amit Agarwal.

Recently Adobe struck out at Apple over its resistance to the inclusion of Flash on iPhone, but this opening up of these powerful Javascript APIs could usher in a whole new range of smartphone compatible web applications that already work on devices such as the iPhone.

Google is also making its Closure Library and Templates available as part of this new web app push, which is a Javascript toolset containing a set of application services and components that run on multiple browsers.

Despite its best efforts to block web and in-browser applications, it seems Google might be poised to open up the iPhone through the internet.