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Hope this isn't too late but......
A Google approved device must meet a number of google guidelines for hardware. Currently, although likely to change shortly with the number of Android tablet devices being shown, your device must have physical buttons for Home, Menu and some sort of trackball. I also believe that they require you to have a camera, a gps and some sort of compass but I am not positive on that, also versions prior to 1.6 (Dohnut) did not offically support medium or high density screens. Hence the reason a device like the Archos 5 IT with Android was not an approved or google experience device.
An approved or google experience device is allowed to preinstall the google App suite that includes Google Mail, Google Maps/Navigation and the Google Marketplace. Unapproved devices are not allowed to have these apps installed by the device Manufacturer.
Some device like the Archos 5IT have been modified by the user community to install the google apps without being an approved device. Google have not passed comment on what they think of this.
To cut a long story short the Android OS is open source and anyone can compile it and install it on any device (assuming they have the development skills) but the Google Experience Apps are the property of Google and only released for install on 'approved' google experience devices.
Hope that helps
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