The word hitting the net waves is that Google’s newest version of their Android operating system, Android 3.0 Gingerbread has emerged out in the wild with the Android team already testing the first builds of Gingerbread on test handsets.

According to an Ionut Arghire article over on Softpedia, the first “live” appearance of Android 3.0 Gingerbread was announced by the guys over on Green Computing, and this is what they say on the matter…

“Android 2.2 (FroYo) took the Linpack lead for the most runs this last week. According to my analytics, Android 2.2 was used 43.1% of the time. Android 2.1-update1, the previous leader was used 39.8% of the time. So what was used for the rest of the 17% of the time? How about 158 other ROMs! That is a lot of variety to choose.

Mixed in with the lot is some curious ROMs; Android 3.0, Android 3.0.1 and Android 3.2.”

So it would appear that Android 3.0 is being tested in the wild on test devices by Google workers and not hackers; however, having said that until such times as Google makes an official announcement over Android 3.0 it’s best to take all this with a pinch a salt for now.