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Google Envisions Free Cell Phones For All
Salvance writes "Google's CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a day when all cell phones are free if the user agrees to watch targeted ads. While he provides no specific plans for Google to give away phones, the implication is that he expects such moves in the future given Google's current pilot successes with delivering text ads on phones." From the article: "Schmidt also said his company was working on how to allow users to maintain basic control of their personal data. Currently, Google stores consumer data on hundreds of thousands of its own computers in order to provide additional services to individual users. The company is looking to allow consumers to export their Web search history or e-mail archives and move them to other sites, if they so choose."
Everything looks like a nail.
When your only revenue is advertisments, everything looks like sticky eyeballs.
Right now,phone calls don't cost much. With all the competitive pressures they'll just come down. Let's say your life is worth $60/hour or $1/minute. How much of your life are you prepared to throw away to get that free phone call?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For a (smart)phone used for web communications, I can understand how they'll target ads, but for a phone that is only used for voice communications, how can targeted ads be implemented? There has been a trend of Google venturing into print, TV, and radio ads, and those can be done successfully through advertisers bidding for related spots on each medium, since newspapers/periodicals have separate sections, and TV and radio have set programming, but what about voice communications? Will they target ads by looking at your contact information? Or perhaps capture keywords in your spoken words? I doubt that, since they will never do any evil, but how else would this work (without text to analyze)?
I could be wrong, but it seems this only means that you would get the device for "free," not the service. This is hardly a revolutionary idea; cellphone providers have been "giving" away devices for free (along with those nasty catch-22's) for ages.
This is not to say I'd go long with this anyway. I'd be very annoyed if my phone beeped every 10 minutes, only to discover that I've received an advertisement.
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Am I the only person who hates advertisements? I don't want to see ads while I browse the internet. I don't want to see ads while I'm watching movies or TV. I don't want to hear ads on the radio. And I sure as hell don't want ads on my cell phone.
Charge me for your product or service, then leave me the fuck alone.
Maybe not
It didn't work with landline phone and it won't work with cell phones!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Which reveals in stark relief what sensible people have been saying for a while - Google isn't a search company, or a technology company - it's an advertising agency.
I think that by exposing everyone to advertisments and commercials people are becoming mute to it. I myself filter all commercials up to the point that it is no more than noise.
Agreed, advertisers find new anoying ways to advertise and schout louder, but I wouldn't be surprised that society will reach a point where commercials no longer have any effect.
How many companies will fall that have their entire income based on commercials?
It's not possible to watch ads 24/7. Sorry folks we simply can't do it. Seems to be a great frustriation to advertisers that we don't want to watch their ads all bloody day. After a while you just shut down. CNN is driving me nuts lately with the Head On commercials. They even tried to make a joke of how obnoxious they are. Hate to break it to them but I switch the channel everytime they come on. The scary thing is if I try to switch to the other CNN channel half the time there's one running there too. I swear the Clockwork Orange eyes pried open senerio is an advertisers wet dream. You want advertising to be more effective? How about less of it. People used to watch commercials or at least let them run. I hit mute or switch the channel everytime so it went from say ten minutes plus an hour to zero exposure for me. How effective are your commercials when no one will watch them or worse yet they switch the channel?
..my 'targeted ad' would be for V1@GRA and 'how to ease your debt'
I love humanity, it is people I hate
Whatever happened to do no evil? What Google is doing is inbetween good and evil. To rip off what someone else said, more or less, Google is doing Goovil.
How will they make sure people actually pay attention and just don't do something else for the 30 seconds or so?
Will there be a 911 and other emergy number exception?
If cell phone calls are so inexpensive, why not fund it through various other means? There are endeavours that require a vast amount of people. I think one of them involves identifying pictures by asking people to say what they think they are. Computers can't really make this distinction right now. Imagine paying people with minutes of free cell phone calls for logging onto their computer, going to a certain site, and aiding in this.
...per month (or other preferred billing peroid) for unlimited calls, but NO ads. Why always this obsession with ads? I have purchased everything I own after seeing other people with the item(s) in their lives, from my first car to an iPod. The standard of living countries that frown on over commercialisation (such as Sweden) is the same or higher than countries that surround themselves with such crap. Google show such little imagination it's stunning. Watch this space.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
The Gizmondo was going to do this. It was going to have what they dubbed "Smart Ads" that would be MMSed to your console. Of course, no-one actually advertised using it, (FWICR) not a single smart ad was ever sent, and the gizmondo has now all-but-disappeared into infamy, shards of Ferarri Enzo, and a jail term for ex-CEO Eriksson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmondo for more details.
Quite (cough) coincidentally, ex-boss of Gizmondo, Carl Freer, is currently running http://www.xeromobile.net/ - a cellphone network offering almost exactly this.
Honestly, I don't even like getting text messages from friends, unless it is a girl who is saying "I am on my way to give you BJ, need beer?"
I don't even watch TV anymore because commercials are so god damn annoying.
The last thing I want is some annoying bullshit ringing my phone while I am sleeping, roll over, cursing the fact that I haven't muted it, check out who sent me what...
"Best buy is having a sale on Kelly Clarkson: From church going babe, to cocksucking ho! And don't forget to watch 3LBS tonight, it's not exactly brain surgery... Actually it is!"
While "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is playing in the background...
Jesus Christ, that is some evil shit.
You take it, I don't want it...
All your ads are belong to Google. ;)
-- Rastignac was here.
The business world seems to have gone advertising crazy!
People don't want adverts. People do not want adverts on TV; that is why we used to have VCRs, before the advent of DVD+RW and Sky Plus. Anything worth watching got recorded, and the advertisements got the fast-forward button. With Sky Plus you can start recording, wait ten minutes or so (the total amount of advert breaks in the programme minus the anticipated amount of time spending re-watching good bits), start watching from the beginning, and fast-forward through the breaks.
People do not want adverts on the radio, which is why it's so good that Radio Two is the first station up from the bottom of the dial.
People don't want adverts in magazines and newspapers, and will turn the page and miss a good story rather than see an advertisement.
People don't want adverts on the internet. Hence the popularity of various advert-blocking and flash-blocking Firefox extensions, the use of "block images from this server" and {for the full-on geek} Squid. Even people without advert-blocking software will navigate away from a site which tries to bombard them with images.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that I would much rather pay cash up front for the phone calls I am going to make, than watch advertisements.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
From TFA: "Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted."
In most places, the only reliable way to get advertisment free tv is by bittorrent.
And you wonder why it accounts for 30% of all net traffic...
The future seems to be 6 months away: http://about.blyk.com/ Nokia envisioned this in 2000, and some people behind Blyk are ex-Nokia executives.
Maybe they are storing data on all of us...maybe... but bear in mind that they provide excellent services and they are all free! they wewre the first huge mega company that actually tried to make things right for the end user - their method of money making (google ads) is not only brilliant it's also far from disturbing the eye - no silly loud banners - no stupid pop ups - no "view this commercial while we are loading the page". Their search is still better then the rest of the search engines, their email is way better then all the rest (not to mention much larger), google earth, google toolbar - need I say more? They are awesom - and I look forward for a bright future with Google
Locksmith
This advertising overload will just cause people to 'develop' a filter, sort of advertising blindness.
Just like what happened to ad banners on the web, i hardly even notice them anymore let alone click on them.
And as people pay less attention to the advertising it's worth less and they'll have to find other sources
of revenue...
It's relatively easy when the medium is passive, like TV.
The next time your phone rings, however, try not answering. You'll reflexively pick it up anyway. You've been programmed to.
This has the potential to be astonishingly annoying to people like me, who use their cell phones for business and are acclimated to the idea that when the phone rings, it's important.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Internet is the data.
Google is a database which maps the data to keys.
Other databases are possible but people don't bother because google search is free.
Many people "envision" things.
Negroponte didn't just envision the OLPC. He DID IT.
So give us a break Chris Di Bona and bring back Kaz
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not everything can be financed buy advertising. Eventually you're going to have to advertise a product that separates the end user from his pennies.
I suspect that the person who makes this product that people are willing to spend money on is going to make a killing.
Well, it should make for some interesting ad targeting.
Let's see, we'll just dial here... Nine One One... Send..... "ring, ring... Your call will be connected shortly. Did you know, Kidde fire extinguishers come with a full lifetime guarantee...."
ARRGGHHH!
Hmmm, try again. Let's call a Corvette dealer.... dial the number here.... "ring, ring.... Your call will be connected shortly. Did you know that you can order Viagra from the privacy and comfort of your home? Press 69* for more information."
Now, if Google would give me a tzatziki chicken sub for viewing ads, I would definitely be interested.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
the idea that in the modern electronic age .. communications for the masses is some kind of convenience or privilege or commodity .. to be payed for by allowing myself to be lied to .. influenced .. manipulated .. conditioned .. pitched .. and sold ..
.. fully functional and participating citizen ..
.. "public education" in it's current form ..
..
.. is destined to implode on itself .. taking everything else in sight with it ..
.. Buy .. Buy .. Goodbye .. mankind ..
..
.. i/we am are FREE to do other work .. i/we am/are FREE to be .. i/we am/are FREE to do anything .. if i/we don't have what i/we Need .. i/we am/are not free at ALL ..
.. i have no FREEDOM ..
as opposed to the "right" of a fully aware
is just another proof that mass brain washing
works very well
and why the corporate capitalist structure
Buy
in a society
if i/we have what i/we NEED
if i have to pay to play
If Google wants records of my phone conversations, it's gonna cost more than a cheap cell phone.
but if you read the article they are looking further into the future than just giving you the latest nokia on a std contract and making you watch a few ads or get a few texts and mms's. the article would be more orientated at a society where the phone replaces the computer, and also states "Schmidt says consumers would get the device without cost - provided they accepy targeted advertising." (SIC) and "Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer" so the article title is a little misleading, which one is it? then they talk about storing consumer data ... very little about free mobiles is mentioned, so really its a pointless article unless you want to discuss possibilities of the way the internet and computer/mobile phones will work in the future.
oh for fuck's sake. there is no such word 'envisions' is barbarous.
it's ENVISAGES!!!!!!
google ENVISAGES whatever it is they mean to envisage. spose envisioning, if it existed, would be the process of turning something concrete back into a Vision. You may feel this is what Google does, but, bollocks, can we get rid of the shitty English?
Brings back bad memories of the dot com era. Personally, I am sick of adverrtisements and would stick to my paid cell phone now. We are bombarded by ads now in everyday life to the point of nausea.
Dramatic much?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I don't watch TV partly because of the ads. I hate ads. I don't want to consume. I don't want to WANT to consume!
Having Stuff be supported by ads is incredibly annoying. I use google instead of say... MSN(ha!) because I don't want my bandwidth sucked up by annoying ads, and I don't want to be clobbered over the head with pictures of pretty people. Frell That. And when I'm just searching, I don't look at the google ads at all. Sure, subliminals count for something... Sigh.
When I do shop, I use sometimes use google (when I don't go directly to a website I know and trust) though. Their ads are less annoying and intrusive. They grate less on my nerves. It's simple. When I want to shop, I'll go FIND the ads. They don't need to find me. Screw the impulse buy!
So, by being less annoying, google gets me to shop through them. Sometimes.
Thank the gods for Adblock and Firefox, or I'd have to browse in Lynx.
I've read Snow Crash. I've read The Selfish Gene. My mental anti-viral software is loaded.
Oh gods, I'm becoming a Luddite.
-T, who will always pay to avoid ads or go without.
Don't Be Evil? It's becoming apparent that Google is nothing more than a highly efficient ad-serving machine whose goal is to make sure that you read their text ads, hear their audio ads, and watch their video ads, i mean, commercials.
What's next? Google DreamWords? gLiminial Ads?
That's why they are inventing ways to send more ads to more people, like these "free" phones. Spammers have shown that if you have a way to send the ads cheaply to enough people, they will still get enough responses to make a profit.
Ironically, it was Google itself who found an answer: make advertisements less visible. While all the others were creating things like blinking pop-ups, Google created a clean page where advertisements are almost unperceptible, visible only to people who are actually looking to buy.
I don't browse the web on my phone. I don't watch TV or listen to music on my phone as well. I use it for what it is.. a PHONE. So I am kind of concerned at to HOW they will bring the ads to me. Will it be something like this?
.. see.. Well, you're father is really sick so you should go see him.
*ring*
Me: Hello?
Phone: This call has been brought to you by....
Me: Argh!
Caller: Hello?
Me: Ah, ok.. I had an ad playing here. What's up?
Caller: It's you're father he is in the hospital with..
Phone: Interested in hospitals? Check these out...
Me: What the f**k?!?
Caller: What did you just say? you're father is in the HOSPITAL!
Me: Sorry, the phone just ran another ad.
Caller: Oh, I
Phone: Want to send flowers.......
Me: Let me call you back from my land line.
Phone: Need phon... *click*
Oh yea.. I can see it now...
No. No ads to talk on the phone. No No No No No. No Joke. No No No No.
I watched some Fox news for a laugh recently - and am shocked, as a Brit, as to how much advertising they sling at you folk over there.
And it all seems to be rather poor, shoddy, lengthy adverts.
Apparently, the 45 mins of "24" fills an hour here (with adverts). But you guys drag it out for an hour and a half.
If that's the style of advertising we'd get, please, no.
Get your own free personal location tracker
When are we going to see (or hear) these ads. How about random intervals in the day? Yeah right, I'm going to have my PHONE telling me what to do? How about before you make a phone call... well shoot what if you have an emergency and you don't have the time for that? The only time where you are pretty sure you have the person's attention and can slip an ad in (it appears to me) is when the receiving phone is ringing. But they would have to make sure that it ONLY happened when it was ringing. It couldn't add to the time it takes to dial (emergencies) and would have to cut off if someone answered right away... If I got completely free phone and service for THAT, I'd do it in a heartbeat (provided the reception was good =))
Probably; advertisers really hate people who turn them off. So why can't basic voice and limited data cell service just be free? It's a lot cheaper to build a voice cell network than a road network. So, why not make it a public service?
Never mind your time, the whole approach neglects the outrageous fees some telcos associate with data vs voice traffic. At the rate I get billed for data transfers, it would be far, far cheaper to buy a cell phone every six month than it would be to pay for the data transfers of advertising.
Especially if it goes beyond SMS ads.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Glad you brought up cable TV. I actually attended one of those lost in the mists of time townhall meetings when a cable company was pitching their wares, and I distinctly heard them mentioning about how there would be "no commercials" if they got their monopoly to string up cable.
Once ad supported phones hit, eventually they will all go to ads, inevitable, unless you agree to "opt out" and pay more, that's my prediction anyway.
In some respects, breaking up the old phone company has worked out in the long run, in other aspects it is still pretty closed, like try to get a non officially blessed phone activated by your local carrier, chances are they will just say "no", can't/won't do that. We've seen any number of articles and posts here about how the government lets them de-tune and dumb down phones and then lock them up so you can't do with them what you want to do and be forced to go through their expensive "features" list. Sure, there's a gray area and warez to try and get around some of those feature locks, but that's what it is, gray area.
You're cell phone battery is low and you just locked your keys in the car. You fire up your cell phone to call one of your friends to come pick you up. Before you make the call a targeted add displays and as a result you're phone dies before you can complete the call. No thanks, I'll pass.
I'm sick of commercials and targeted ads as it is. I'd rather pay what I'm paying now and own the phone. It's bad enough that I've got to watch ads before I sit to watch a movie and while I'm watching television (that was originally supposed to be entirely free but now costs me more than $100 a month to get all of the channels that I want), I'll pass when I'm using a phone. It reminds me of those gas stations a while back that put a speaker in the pump and played ads while I filled my car up with gas. What a pain in the ass. People around where I lived stopped going to that station and they got rid of the ads real quick.
There is a guy in Hawaii looking to roll this out nationwide using a variation of our technology at http://www.mexuar.com/
You can check out his trial site for free phone calls here http://talk.alohatone.com/demo2/
He has a couple of other concept sites here http://talk.alohatone.com/
Cheers,
Dean
Mexuar USA
Look, I don't mind commercials. I'd /really/ like /targeted/ commercials. They just never seem to be truly targeted to my interests. Very rarely when I do a Google on the things that interest me are the sidebar ads relevent to what I'm actually looking for. It seems 90% of the "targeted" ads are really just totally irrelevent ads someone has paid to associate with the keywords I was actually searching for.
/really/ give me targeted commercials, I wouldn't mind them so much.
If they could
And something else - I hate REPETITION in ads. I don't mind sitting through commercials as I watch Battlestar Galactica every Friday night, but PLEASE - do I have to sit through the SAME Geico commercial with that stupid talking lizard every 10 minutes? It was mildly interesting the first time, but the message doesn't get any better the second or twentieth time I see it. Give me variety and entertaining commercials, and I will watch them happily. Repeat the same shit over and over and I'll get up and take a leak or something during commercials.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Google wants to give phones as long as you agree to watch ads.
People want to take phones and then ignore or bypass the ads.
At some point these two things will become in conflict. Just like ads on web sites. How many people have ad blockers again?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I see where you're coming from, but that's a misuse of the term "advertising agency". They compete in no way with the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi. They are an advertising broker, being a middle-man between those who have ad-space and those who want to place ads (some of which will have been designed by ad agencies). Even that doesn't do them justice, though -- it's merely a description of their main source (AFAIK) of revenue. What they are is an information organisation company. They apply that skill to many things, including the problem of ad brokerage. They gain revenue not only through the ad brokerage service, but also as an ad-space provider in their own right. They are successful in the former case because their information organisation skills result in (relatively) effective automated ad placement, and in the latter case because their various information organisation tools (like Gmail) are popular and double as ad-space.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
CNN is driving me nuts lately with the Head On commercials. They even tried to make a joke of how obnoxious they are. Hate to break it to them but I switch the channel everytime they come on.
But you are now familiar with "Head On" as a brand. The average consumer is now far more likely to select Head On instead of some equally useless, but less familiar generic homeopathic headache remedy. I would guess that very few American consumers are even smart enough to research their headache remedy purchases in the first place (a quick Wikipedia search reveals the snake-oil nature of Head On)
Wasn't that the goal in the first place? Advertising works far better than anyone is willing to admit.
A while ago my mother was complaining about how her vacuum cleaner didn't suck anymore. (har). Well, she said she had heard good things about the Oreck line of vacuum cleaners. She just might have bought one of those overpriced pieces of junk, had I not been there to google for "Oreck reviews" and see what some actual real people thought about them. It turns out her preference was entirely due to constant exposure to Oreck's often lengthy advertisements and infomercials, despite the fact that she had not been paying conscious attention to them all these years.
Advertising works, and it ain't just about click-through. It's all about brand awareness and plain old brainwashing.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Not on our phones!
Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And t-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky.
But not on phones! No sirree!
I can envision a scene from the next cheest horror flick where the heroine is just about to get chainsawed by the creepy dude and she's desperately trying to call 911 on her cellphone only to discover that she has to watch the latest Bowflex commercial.
During the dot com boom there were ISPs that offered down-market rates if you'd just let them clutter up your browser with ads. Most of us would rather just pay more and not put up with even more ads than are already on the web pages. I make so little use of my cell phone that I'm considering cancelling my service. But under no circumstances am I going to move to some obnoxious ad supported cell service.
Apply directly to the forehead!
Apply directly to the forehead!
Apply directly to the forehead!
Funniest one (to me anyway, and granted, I am strange), was when I was googling antarctica stuff and on the side was a shop at ebay for icebergs ad!
What's peculiar about this kind of thing is that we should bear in mind that for these ad-driven services and products to be successful, they have to pursade you to watch adverts that cause you to spend more than would have without the product. So if they hand out a 'free' phone (worth maybe $30) - then the belief is that you'll spend $30 more than you would have done with the people sponsoring the phone.
OK - so that's a net gain for the advertisers - and a net loss for their competitors. If all companies advertise - then this is a zero sum game: ultimately, the cost of all of this advertising is in increasing the price of the advertised products - and the amount of that increase is exactly what you would have paid for your 'free' phone - plus the cost of filming the adverts, paying all of the various middle-men, etc. This makes NO SENSE.
Rational buyers should realise that the best value-for-money comes from products with the smallest advertising budget.
Use those adverte to tell you what NOT to buy. The cars you see most often on TV ads are the ones where the most corners had to be cut in order to pay for those adverts.
www.sjbaker.org
"You have an incoming phone call that is being brought to you by Cruex. Do you have painful, burning jock itch? Try Cruex! This targetted ad brought to you by Google AdSense."
And speaking of Sci-Fi Channel - I'd take a slew of Geico ads over the deluge of Cruex ads that were hammered into us when the network was new...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Geez, don't get your Lightspeeds in a bunch!
>Or you are not shopping, in which case any advertisement you see is an intrusion, and takes away from your time.
/future/ shopping.
/enjoy/ viewing advertisements for those sorts of things, whether I am shopping for them or not.
Just because I'm not presently shopping does not mean that there might be advertisements that I might be interested in for
For exmample, I am a new parent. Thus advertisements relevent to babies are of interest to me while I'm watching TV, whereas a year ago they were not. I'm into computers and electronics, and so I
Conversely, I hate sports, so any advertisement related to that would be a waste of my time.
What I would love to see are advertisements that I can actually SIGN UP FOR that would DYNAMICALLY be assigned to my programming.
For example - let's say you could download an episode of Battlestar Galactica. In that episode are 10 30-second commercial spots. But these commercial spots are dynamically filled in based on demographic/interest information that I CHOOSE at the time of downoad. Let's say I choose to view commercials about baby products, computers, LCD monitors, and camping. When I download, 5 commercials are selected FROM THE TOPICS I chose.
This would seem an ultimate win-win to me (I should patent it! lol). Content sellers get to sell advertising to people who ASKED FOR IT, and I get to see advertisements about things I truly am interested in, rather than what my "demographic" predicts I would be interested in.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"It's not possible to watch ads 24/7."
They want you to watch ads 23/6 and spend that last hour and day buying the products advertised.
Free wifi + Voip = free cell phone service. It's that simple.
Sure we may have to pay some initial fee for a device, but I'm sure in 5 years we'll be able to get something that works for $20 or less. I guess some people will be willing to give you a phone for free, but I doubt that will be of interest to most consumers (and certainly not of most people reading this website). Most folks will get a nice looking device that works well with whatever electronics they already own (computer, stereo perhaps).
The state of Rhode Island is already in the process of putting up WiMax towers for the entire state. This isn't going to free for everyone to use initially (it's being marketed as something business will be able to pay for), but once it's up and running, people are going to push to make it open to the public. Whatever the cost, it'll be a lot less than individual households paying ISPs and phone companies, and eventually it'll be funded by taxes. Between WiMax and municiple WiFi, large chunks of the population will have free internet, and then we'll work on filling in the gaps.
Free phone service for all is a great thing, but I sure don't need Google to tell me it's on its way.... before completing this call, please stand by for this message from Google.com.
I'll PAY to NOT watch them. Or how about this....(I'm sure there would be a way to keep it from happening)... You're in an automobile crash and try to dial 911...but first, a word from our sponsors.....LOL
Maybe this would work in a developing nation?
For me, on the other hand, I use an uber-cheap phone from T-Mobile. There's no way I'm going to watch a commercial every time I make a call when it's so damn cheap to own my phone outright. (Granted, I'd use a free phone if the WALLPAPER were an advertisement...)
No, I will not work for your startup
Its not about the advertising. It's about (logical extreme) everyone in the world having telecommunication access (read freedom to communicate) regardless of whether or not they have the means, financial or otherwise, to acquire it. This is simply Google's current running idea on how to accommodate that end goal.
I wonder if Google is contemplating using Voip WIMAX for cell phones...???. My guess is that the cell phone companies would be opposed to it since it competes directly with them. So Google would be forced to use a alternative method such as Wimax or Wifi for voice. Earlier this year a employee at Google, said they were investigating Wimax for city wifi deployments. The one hurdle is gaining access to the higher end frequencies. This is needed to increase the the distance.