It’s starting to look like this is the week for major companies to let things slip by accident. Yesterday it was Apple, who may have let drawings of the new iPhone through in a patent. Today it’s Google, who apparently accidentally confirmed the next version of Android in Google Play today.

Earlier today a post appeared on the XDA developer forums showing an image of the Google Play checkout screen. The poster had been doing some price comparisons of the unlocked Galaxy Nexus, and noticed an interesting little tidbit in the product description in his shopping cart. The description calls the Galaxy Nexus “The latest smartphone from Google, soon the first phone with Android 4.1 Jell[y Bean].” The post was noticed by DroidLife, who did a little digging of their own and found not only the reference to 4.1 Jelly Bean, but also a thumbnail that appears to show a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean. Check out their images below:

As you might expect, the references to Jelly Bean have since been removed from Google Play.

The fact that Google is including references to Jelly Bean in Google Play – even by accident – suggests that they’re very close to being ready to launch the update. If so, then the likeliest time for them to do so will be at the Google I/O conference next week. Of course, that leaves the question of what new features Jelly Bean will include. For that, we’ll just have to wait.