Google’s charm offensive towards mobile developers seems to be intensifying. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Internet giant handed out free Nexus One handsets, which retail for more than $500, to several hundred developers attending presentations at the Android Development Lab.

The Nexus One giveaway follows hard-on-the-heels of Eric Schmidt’s speech to the Mobile World Congress in which he told the packed auditorium that Google was now following a “Mobile First” mantra. Schmidt, Google’s CEO, was generous with his time, as well as his hardware – his session over-ran as he took many questions from the floor.

Schmidt’s colleagues are present in force at the mobile industry’s biggest show. Under the Congress’s App Planet umbrella, Google’s development lab is designed to be somewhere developers can hang out and chat to Android experts, amid cool lava lamps and gleaming white decor, as well as listen to presentations on how to code for the Linux-based smartphone operating system.

Although Google didn’t appear to flag in advance that it would be handing out free Nexus One phones, the presentations were packed-out with perhaps 150 people filling the small makeshift auditorium. Apparently, Google has been hosting similar Android Development Labs across Europe for the past several weeks.

Selling softly with kindness

The internet giant is obviously trying to win converts to the platform, but it is partly preaching to the converted. In one session, entitled an “Introduction to Android Development” about half the audience indicated in a show of hands that they were already coding for Android. The presentation itself was a soft sales pitch for Android, with a Google engineer pointing out the advantages of the platform: Apps don’t need to be approved to feature in Android Market, developers can download the entire Android source code, replace the system applications (including the user interface) with their own applications, create apps that can interact with other apps, make data in their apps searchable and even create interactive wallpapers that support their apps.

With Google coming under some fire recently for letting the Android platform fragment, the presenter was also at pains to point out that the software development kit (SDK) makes it easy for apps to run across handsets with different screen resolutions. However, he didn’t tackle the more thorny issue of how developers cope with the major difference in processor speeds between the first and second generations of Android handsets.

Still, the overall message was clear – Google will go to great lengths to court Android developers and make their lives easier. It was also a timely reminder of how much work Google’s old adversary, Microsoft, still has to do to be really competitive in this fast-changing market. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, pitched up at the Congress to unveil an entirely new smartphone operating system, but it won’t be in commercial handsets until late 2010. In the meantime, Google is likely to dangle many more carrots in the direction of developers.