Dave Kemick

Google finally announced last Monday their plans for the Google Phone.  That is to say what we thought would be the Google phone.  I’ve been anticipating this for a while since, being a geek, I’m always planning my next gadget purchase.  As far as phones go I’m excited for the next revision of the iPhone as well as the OpenMoko.  Either that or some other type of smart phone.  Anyways, the Google Phone was definitely on my radar.  So now I’m kind of bummed since the Google Phone, as of now, isn’t really a phone at all – it’s just an operating system that can be run on a phone.  Details are still sketchy about the final product since it’s at least two years off, but we know that it will be based around the Android OS that I had heard about prior to the official announcement.

Android is really just a mobile phone platform that Google will give to current cellphone companies to base their hardware around.  The question about this is whether or not these companies, after getting the Android OS from Google, will just lock down the presumably open source software anyways.  A couple of the companies Google is working with are T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm and Motorola.  Obviously missing from this list are companies like Nokia who have their own phone software that they’re trying to push.  Plus Apple.  Big surprise there.  I’m looking forward to seeing what these firms do with the SDK that Google released.

Since the release of any Google-powered phone is still a ways off it’s hard to imagine what one will be like, but most people who have written about this subject (and people who are just familiar with how Google works) agree that there will probably be some sort of localized ad-placement.  If the phones are offered at a highly discounted price with, for instance, no monthly fees, you might be subject to some ad placement from the phone.  For example, if you were walking down the street your phone might ping you and say "Hey, would you like to see where the closest restaurant is?" You could (hopefully) respond yes or no, and if yes they would feed you a little ad for the restaurant and perhaps give you a coupon or something of that nature.  I really hope they don’t force this on the user, it would make the phone a bother to use if you absolutely had to subject yourself to the ad whether you wanted to see it or not.  I’ll be interested to see though, whether people might be willing to ditch their phone bill for a cheap or free phone and be okay with dealing with ads.  A lot of us use Gmail and we’re subjected to advertisements constantly and yet almost no one complains about it.  Same thing about Google’s search engine.  If the hardware to back up the software is decent it might be something to look into, but that’s all on the phone companies now.

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