Sometime between the start of October and the end of December, a statue representing a large, man-shaped cookie should be unveiled next to the cupcake, donut, and eclair figures already on display at the Googleplex.  A WebM FAQ revealed that the next version of Android will be called "Gingerbread," and that it’ll land in the fourth quarter of this year.

Credit appears to go Hector Lopez for actually reading the FAQ, which is something of a beast at 2,500 words.  Anyway, this is the key sentence he found about three-quarters of the way through the document: "WebM support in Android is expected in the Gingerbread release (currently planned for Q4, 2010)."

So now, the same day Google officially announced Froyo/Android 2.2 at Google I/O, we can be almost sure of what’s coming next.  That provides a nice bit of continuity, even if it might have the unfortunate effect of drawing attention away from the Android team’s other accomplishments.

Of course, we’ll keep an eye out for additional details, regardless.

But here’s one unproven conjecture: since the Eclair-to-Froyo evolution took us from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2, and the Q4 release goal doesn’t leave Google with a lot of turnaround time, it seems safe to bet that Gingerbread will be version 2.3 rather than represent a leap to 2.4 or anything higher.