That’s because Rich Miner’s day job these days is heading the East Coast wing of Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Internet giant. And as a money guy, Miner said that, until very recently, the money was still in making apps for the iPhone.

“There were just that many more handsets out there,” Miner said, speaking on stage at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. “That has clearly flipped.”

Miner said that Android, which was little more than some demos and PowerPoint slides when Google acquired it, is now a major player and, in many ways, a better option for start-ups. In part, he said, that’s because it is easier for users to develop and test applications because it supports side-loading of programs so that companies can test out and refine their ideas before launching them.

Miner has plenty of money to put where his mouth is. His Google-backed fund has $100 million to invest each year, Miner said, with investments so far in areas as diverse as automotive to clean tech to Internet companies. At the event, Miner announced that Google Ventures has invested in two mobile companies, Crittercism and Astrid.

Miner said that the goal of Google Ventures is to make money, not to push Google’s various platforms and strategies. That said, Miner said his tie to Google is a big advantage, giving him a Google badge, a deep rolodex and “Google Goggles.”

“We can see the world through Google’s eyes,” Miner said.

Of course, things weren’t always that way for Miner.

He noted that Android wasn’t originally looking to sell itself to Google. The small self-funded start-up was just going around raising money, pitching companies on the value and importance of having an open smartphone operating system. Miner said that Larry Page immediately latched on to the idea, while then-CEO Eric Schmidt and Sergei Brin were less focused on mobile at that point.

Since then, Miner said, Brin and Schmidt have become experts in wireless.

“All three came to be champions,” he said.

So companies like Foursquare, and now SCVNGR, are teaming up with American Express to help users redeem deals and get credits when they swipe their credit cards.

Through the AmEx Smart Offer APIs available to approved partners, users can connect their social/local services to their AmEx accounts, and then when they use their AmEx cards to pay, deals are automatically credited through the card payment system.

Seems like a positive improvement in user experience, but for now it’s only very spottily implemented.

Through a partnership announced today, American Express cardholders will now be able to redeem coupons bought with SCVNGR’s LevelUp app at Levi’s stores in Boston, Philadelphia and–for the next week only–in San Francisco. That’s one retailer, one social service and one card provider, in three cities. Not exactly blanket coverage!

Meanwhile, a Foursquare-AmEx partnership launched for just 1,000 users at South by Southwest in Austin in March, where participants qualified for a $5 credit every time they spent at least $5.

A representative for American Express said the company was very satisfied with the demand for the Foursquare SXSW deal, and expected it would soon be extended. Meanwhile, SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch said LevelUp merchants who accept AmEx in Philadelphia and Boston can join the promotion starting this week.

LevelUp rewards loyalty by giving customers increasingly good discounts if they buy more coupons from the same retailer. It only takes a cut of the deals if a customer has bought more than one.

SCVNGR investor Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android and now a partner at Google Ventures, said he expected that eventually near-field communication technology embedded on phones would be widely used to redeem deals (so a customer would swipe to buy), but for now SCVNGR is taking advantage of something that’s already widely deployed: credit cards.

Joe Kraus–the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sold his most recent start-up, JotSpot, to Google in 2006 and has been a director of product management since–has moved to its Google Ventures unit as a partner, said several sources.

Sources added that Kraus (pictured above) is likely to be the first of several well-known appointments at the relatively new venture arm of the search giant.

Google (GOOG) announced its VC play in March and said the fund will invest $100 million in “exceptional” start-ups over the next year.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post when Google Ventures debuted. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Well, that now apparently means Kraus, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded the Web 1.0-era Excite portal and, in Web 2.0, JotSpot, which made wiki-style software for online collaboration.

Currently, only Miner and Maris are listed on the bios page of Google Venture’s online site.

Since the acquisition, Kraus has been leading Google’s OpenSocial efforts to develop standards for social networking platforms.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Presumably, then, the scope of the fund’s investments will be as diverse and, ahem, fascinating as the whims of Google’s leadership. Which isn’t always a good thing. That said, Google Ventures may do much to help the company innovate itself out of this downturn and perhaps even spot and engulf the next Google (GOOG) killer before it has a chance to live up to its namesake. As Google Ventures explains in its FAQ, it’s not above engulfing a company it’s incubated. “Acquisitions by Google of portfolio companies are possible, but this is not the goal or focus of our investment activities. Our focus is building great companies and generating long term financial return.”

Obviously. But for Google, right?

[Image Credit: Ignorance Is Futile!]

Of course, there’s a danger in that: code forking. With so many developers working on Android’s code–all with unique views of what it is and what it should do–there’s a possibility that the platform could fragment into multiple versions spread across innumerable vertical devices. A confusing prospect for consumers. Google aims to combat this with a nonfragmentation agreement that asks developers not to “modify [the Android code] in noncompatible ways.” While that should prevent some developers from forking Android’s code, it surely won’t prevent all of them.

[Image Credit: Rich Dellinger]