The Google Phone?

VE3OGG writes "There has been ample hype over the last several years that Apple's iPhone was just around the corner. (Though a product named iPhone was just recently released by Cisco / Linksys.) Well, while Apple fans continue to salivate at the thought of a phone powered by the company-of-cool, the index-everything-while-doing-no-evil company may be setting itself up to produce their own Google phone in partnership with Orange."

Glad they're calling in the pros

[Sciros]

So, an internet-enabled phone that isn't total rubbish at it? Sounds good to me.
I wonder exactly how much of the software Google will be writing, because as more mobiles become internet-capable it seems to me that making viruses for them can start to make sense. I don't think most mobile software is all that secure, but I'm thinking if Google has a stake in it, it will at least be secure *enough.*

How much growth is left...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much growth is left in the cell phone biz? Once everybody who needs or wants one, has one, I don't see the introduction of a new phone being that big a deal. I'm not going to switch my phone until the end of my two year contract, and even then I'll probably hold onto it for a while. And of course, everybody wonders how much growth is left in Google, but they keep raising the bar. I think the guy who said Google is going to mint millionaire brainiacs who will start their own companies had the most likely scenario for GDecline.

Re:Glad they're calling in the pros

[asliarun]

From TFA, it looks like the Big G is mainly focusing on optimizing bandwidth by compression, and i'm guessing, by using a Google proxy. On a side note, I think that two of the biggest problems with surfing the internet via a cellphone are
1. Small display
2. Input interface

The first is getting bigger, but there's only so much room to grow, especially if you want to keep the form factor within reasonable limits so that the damn thing will fit in your pocket.

Regarding the second, i was thinking that it might be a good idea to have a good voice recognition software to do the user input instead of using the microscopic cellphone buttons. Alternately, if a good touch-sensitive interface can be built that lets us write text directly into the URL window or textboxes, it would make surfing so much easier. This can be made better if the UI recognizes that we're trying to type into a small textbox, and automatically zooms the textbox for us.

Perhaps, someone's already done all this, as i'm a bit of a cellphone luddite, but does this make sense?

Google and Orange -- marketing focus group last yr

[Anonymous Coward]

Prob. breaking an NDA, so posting anonymously. Over a year ago I participated in a focus group on cell phone usage. The premise was that Orange was looking to make the move to the US, and we were to evaluate their marketing plan. The session was pretty standard until they took out (presumaby simulated) pics of the phones showing tight integration with Google Maps, and Google chat. Quite frankly, it was really exciting -- particularly using location based services with graphical integration. All the standard stuff was bandied about, but because it was Google, it looked nicer. Orange was thinking of marketing cell phones w/o a contract, and charging for the phone -- or at least the focus group wanted to know what we thought of that option.

No, this puts another nail in Microsoft's coffin

[skiingyac]

I don't think Google is doing this for the purpose of enabling fancy feature X or getting its hands in TV/radio/whatever distribution.

The real killer is that right now the vast majority of Google's users are able to use Google's service thanks to the Microsoft monopoly providing said user with an OS and/or browser. If I were Google, (secret) priority #1 would be to sidestep Microsoft as soon as possible.

If Google can give people usable cell phone based interfaces to its services, then all Google has to worry about is providing quality services that people want to use, which they seem to be able to with little effort.

The only middleman then is the cell phone providers, which Google can sidestep by rolling out its own wireless network, probably similar to what Sanswire [sanswire.com] wants to do (or Google will buy Sanswire) with cheap blimps, then Google can have a way to sell ads to people 24/7 with a device that effectively costs Google $0 because people will be paying to make wireless VoIP calls using the same device.

This is all hypothetical of course, but its exactly what I would suggest if I worked at Google.

Re:Glad they're calling in the pros

[RESPAWN]

I would really like to know what exactly you are referring to when you speak of voice recognition. My phone (LG vx9900, aka LG enV) has voice recognition for a list of commands. In fact, the amazing thing to me compared to my last phones is that I haven't had to train it. It's able to parse the name I speak and match it to a name in my address book with about 90% success rate. Note that this includes several friends with names that the phone itself has trouble pronouncing. Which brings me to the other interesting thing about the phone: voice synthesization. It will tell me out loud who's calling (by name if they're in my address book or by number if they're not) and it will read back my text messages to me. I think this is all done on something like a 400MHz embedded chip.