Google phone? Hello, keep searching

Stan Beer
Sunday, 25 March 2007 15:50

Opinion and Analysis

When the word got out last year that Apple was actually building the iPhone, most (although not all) of us believed it. However, should we believe the same sort of rumours that have surfaced lately about the so-called GPhone from Google?

The answer is simple and clear. Talk of a Google phone is just that - talk. There will be no Google phone for a number of reasons.

The primary reason that the GPhone is a non starter is that Google is just not connected (so to speak) to the world of hardware development, let alone the exceptionally specialized world of mobile telephony.

Even the quintessential hardware developer, Apple, faced a multi-year hill to climb before it was ready to bring the iPhone to market. Apple executives as well as Steve Jobs himself explained some of the challenges that the company had to face and overcome.

In order to be a player in the mobile phone space, Apple was forced to deal with companies from a totally foreign and culturally different corporate world. This was apparent at the Macworld Expo in January when iPhone was launched.

Watching Steve Jobs of Apple and Stan Sigman, CEO of Cingular, deliver their addresses to the Macworld crowd was like watching beings from different planets. However, as Apple executives later pointed out, the alliance was essential in order to deliver applications such as email.

Could Google forge similar alliances with mobile carriers worldwide? Anything is possible but it is not likely. Google is for a free and open Internet, where voice and messaging are free applications supported by advertising. This is diametrically opposed to the user pays ideology of mobile telephony carriers.

Then of course there is the Google connection with Apple, where Google CEO Eric Schmidt is a board member. If Google were to launch a mobile phone, it would be a competing product to the iPhone and Schmidt would have a clear conflict of interest.

On the subject of Apple, the company has not opened up iPhone for third party developers. However, it is a fair bet to assume, given Schmidt's high level involvement with both companies, that Google is busily developing applications for the iPhone platform in close cooperation with Apple.

In actual fact, the Apple iPhone could well be viewed as a sort of bridge between the worlds of mobile telephony and Google. The iPhone is probably as close to a Google phone that the world is going to see anytime soon. Google is a great Internet company and the Internet is the domain where it is likely to remain and reign supreme for the foreseeable future.