If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple’s iPhone developers must be basking in the reflected glory right about now.

Google showed off its rival Android mobile user interface at its annual developer conference in San Francisco today. A flick of the finger scrolls between pages on the mobile browser or drags items around the screen – just like the iPhone. To enlarge elements on a web page to make them easier to view, Google introduces a small magnification pane that can be dragged around by touch. All very nice – though the interface lacked the classic simplicity of the iPhone and there was no talk of when Android-powered handsets will actually hit the market.

That followed Microsoft’s demo the night before of the multi-touch UI it is planning for the next version of Windows. With two fingers, you can move images around a screen or enlarge them – or you could, if the software was available (after Bill Gates had suggested that a post-Vista Windows might come sooner than expected, Microsoft execs have been back on script this week with a promise of “no later than early 2010.”)

History also suggests that Microsoft is not a pioneer when it comes to user interfaces (this official blog post on the next Windows interface of course skips the fact that Apple was first out with a graphical UI, and who can forget the Tablet PC, which was personally championed by Gates?)

The best that can be said for the latest Google and Microsoft showings: very nice, but it’s not Apple, and it’s not available now. All of which means that when Steve Jobs returns to the stage for Apple’s developer conference on June 9th – where among other things he is expected to show off version 2.0 of the iPhone software – he will have the floor to himself.

“This is the perfect time to start a company.”

At least that is what Max Levchin had to say when I dropped by to see him in Slide‘s SoMa office last week. But isn’t creating an internet company at the tail-end of the last start-up boom a disastrous idea?

This is Levchin’s reasoning. Members of the last crop of start-ups – many of them Web 2.0 companies created two-three years ago – are fast approaching their date with destiny. A slowing US economy and worsening financing environment will force those that haven’t already proven they can make money to consider a sale (we reported at greater length today on the general scarcity of revenue in Web 2.0 land and the slow start to the much-hyped “widget economy”.)

When that happens, Levchin hopes to be around to pick up the pieces. He says it was a hunch about the economic slowdown that prompted him to raise a pile of cash at the end of last year as a “warchest” for the tough times ahead. (He won’t comment on the details, but a reliable source says Slide got $50m, putting an eye-popping valuation on the widget-maker of $500m.)

The acquisition game makes sense. Slide is still early in trying to find ways to make money from its widgets, but one that Levchin says is starting to work is the use of corporate sponsorship on SuperPoke: next time you get an urge to throw a sheep at a friend on Facebook, why not send a promotion for Pimms instead? (OK, that one doesn’t sound like it would work, but you get the idea.) SuperPoke wasn’t Slide’s idea: it was started by three young developers in Seattle but Levchin bought it when he realised last summer that it was starting to take off.

And that is apparently why it’s time to think about starting a company again. By the time the coming shake-out is over, a whole new generation will be starting to find its feet. As they say in Silicon Valley: the best time to start a new business is when things turn down.

Google understands that it has a big transparency problem. That much is clear from a blog posting today by Udi Manber, the engineer in charge of its search quality. The problem is, there is very little the company can do about it.

The problem stems from the “black box” nature of its search ranking algorithms. No one knows why some websites come out higher than others in response to certain queries, and the methodology is always changing. That creates headaches for anyone who relies to any significant degree on traffic from Google (i.e., just about every business on the Web.)

Requests for more clarity about how the company arrives at its rankings have always been brushed off with a curt “no comment”: Googlers simply say that giving any of their tricks away would help people game its system.

So it’s highly revealing that Manber felt compelled to write. He rehearses the old line about the need for secrecy, then says:

But being completely secretive isn’t ideal, and this blog post is part of a renewed effort to open up a bit more than we have in the past. We will try to periodically tell you about new things, explain old things, give advice, spread news, and engage in conversations.

“Conversations”? Google? That would really be a culture change.

The trouble is, Manber has little to say other than platitudes. He promises a peek inside Google’s “black box” but gives nothing much away.

This brings to mind something that Harvard professor Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger had to say at the FT’s digital media conference in London earlier this year. He argued that there are two possible futures for Google. In one, a stronger competitor emerges in search. In the other, an unchallenged Google comes under the sway of regulators who feel compelled to act to protect the many Web citizens who are forced to rely on its opaque rankings.

Manber’s blog post is a clear sign that Google understands the risks of being seen as an internet monopolist that has no one to answer to. Whether he can change that perception is doubtful.

There was a distinct lack of fireworks at the ”factory tour” that Google put on today to show off its search prowess. More than anything else, what came across (and what always comes across when Google engineers take the stage) is that making search work really well is difficult.

Most of the time was taken up with incremental improvements in two of the most promising areas: local search and “universal” search. These are not new, but they have the potential to greatly enhance the relevance and range of material returned by regular Web searches.

When I had a moment to talk to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, she concurred that most advances in quality are largely invisible to the average user, though an occasional eye-grabbing feature – such as the video links returned in universal search results – are more noticeable.

According to Mayer, around 30 per cent of Google’s search results presently fall into the “universal” category (meaning that they draw on a search of seven different sources – videos, maps, news, books, images, products and blogs.) That proportion will grow as Google works out how to return relevant blended results from these different sources for more types of query, she added.

Universal search has been talked of as the Holy Grail of the business, drawing on all types and sources of information to deliver the most relevant result. Yet to judge from what Mayer says, the real “killer app” of universal search has yet to be seen. This will come from extending search to social networks and drawing in information that is deeply personal to the user and their network of friends and contacts.

Footnote: What fireworks there were today came with the formal  launch of Google Health, a service for storing personal health records online (limited for now to the US.) This is a project that has attracted an inordinate amount of attention in the time it has been under development, but it is still hard to see it as a mainstream service for some time. Few health records exist in digital form, and while it sounds a nice idea in principle, there seem to be few incentives for now for most doctors or patients to change their behaviour.