Google boss burnt by ‘Nokiasoft’ deal

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Schmidt said the search giant held "confidential negotiations with Nokia that were extensive” before the Finnish vendor opted for the Windows Phone 7 platform.

The soon-to-leave CEO left the door open for Nokia should they want to renege on the Microsoft deal.

"We would like them to adopt Android at some point in the future and that offer remains open. We think Android was a good choice for Nokia. We are sorry they made a different choice” he said.

That may well be a possibility, after an anonymous group of Nokia shareholders announced plans to dislodge Stephen Elop and rethink the use of the WP7 platform.

During his speech, Schmidt revealed that Android is gaining 300,000 new users each day. At that rate, its no surprise ad revenues of the mobile OS are forecast to surpass $1 billion dollars by 2012.