Google Telephony

Okay, so today's news about Google's entrance into the telecommunications world has been rumored for months if not years. But, today's announcement was still real news and represented what for many was a significant departure from the announcement they were expecting. Many thought Google would announce a GPhone, not unlike what you see to the right. What they got was an alliance of 33 companies attempting to rewrite the rules of the cell phone world. I won't get you my first impression here. Rather, I will shower you with links. It is a cop out, but I really can't do this story justice. If you read this in order it is better:

1) Andy Rubin: The Man Behind the Google Phone

The Google Phone — which, according to several reports, will be made by Google partners and will be available by the middle of 2008 — is likely to provide a stark contrast to the approaches of both Apple and Microsoft to the growing market for smartphones. Google, according to several people with direct knowledge of its efforts, will give away its software to hand-set makers and then use the Google Phone’s openness as an invitation for software developers and content distributors to design applications for it.

If the effort succeeds, it will be the most drastic challenge to date of the assertion by Microsoft — the godfather of the desktop PC — that Google and other members of the so-called open-source world can imitate but not innovate.

2) Google Phone Crunched

Reports started trickling out last week that Google is ready to announce its Gphone, or rather Gphones. It is more a reference design, than a single phone. Android-based phones will start to come out on the market in the latter half of 2008 (from HTC at minimum). One mobile startup CEO I know says he was contacted on Friday by Google and given the final go-ahead to port his app onto Android, which his company has not even started to work on yet. The software development kit will be available on November 12. Today’s announcement is just that. There is nothing concrete here in terms of products or services, but going mobile represents a major growth opportunity for Google, which wants to bring the Internet (along with search and contextual ads) to your phone.

3) Bloomberged

Spending on mobile-phone ads may jump to $11.4 billion worldwide by 2011 from $2.17 billion today, according to Informa Plc, a London-based research firm. Google, in Mountain View, California, gets 99 percent of its more than $10 billion in annual sales from advertising, mostly by selling text links next to search results on its own pages and partner sites.

Google shares passed $700 last week, gaining $100 in less than a month, on speculation the company would extend its lead in Internet advertising into wireless devices. Gene Munster, an analyst at Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray & Co., predicted as early as August that Google was developing software to run mobile phones.

4) WSJ

Android is a bid to change how the wireless industry operates. Carriers traditionally have decided what applications most consumers see on their cellphones, setting rules and negotiating fees for software developers to gain access. Google has struggled at times in recent years to get its products -- including Google Maps, Gmail email and its search engine -- onto mobile phones in a way that's easy for people to use. With Android, software makers can theoretically write applications that run on any user's phone -- and consumers can freely browse the Web.