Verizon Might Deliver Google Phone

MrCrassic writes "There are talks floating around surrounding Google's possible talks with Verizon and possibly T-Mobile to establish an agreement for the carrier to deliver phones carrying Google's speculated mobile operating system. According to the article, one of the main hurdles slowing down the product are concerns about user privacy and advertising, one of Google's well-renowned strengths. With over 6 million customers potentially at their disposal, could this be "the deal" that establishes Google's hegemony in the internet sphere?"

Comments

Mobile phones + do no evil?

[jargon82]

Are these two concepts even remotely compatible?
In any event, I look forward to seeing this mobile OS from google, and I do hope they don't get too tightly wrapped in all that is evil about mobile phones.

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[WPIDalamar]

Maybe Google will make them never ring in public places and inform the user when they're talking too loudly :)

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[jargon82]

The video that summary ultimately links to has been removed. Apparently for a terms of use violation... I wonder exactly what it violated?

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I'm more concerned about the potential collision of Verizon + Do No Evil... A paradoxical combination like this could rip a hole in the space-time continuum.

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[gEvil (beta)]

So it'll hang up on you if you say "Can you hear me now?" Verizon won't be too happy about that...

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[smilindog2000]

I think Bill is effectively retired, enjoying his money, and doing charity work for the good of the world. If he weren't, he'd have already done some of the things Google could do for cell phones.

I have to say, I can hardly wait! A open linux based dev platform for phones with the backing and vision of Google could be huge. For example, I want to be able to say "Find a Chinese restaurant" to the phone, and have Google maps show me the nearest three. I want to the touch one of them with my finger, and have my phone turn into a GPS to route me there. That's just one dumb idea... the possibilities are enormous, as is the potential add revenue for Google. Imagine when you can buy location-based Google words... for example "Chinese restaurant", but only within 15 miles. Or how about sorting searches by distance as well as relevance? Google could own the world.

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[hey!]

This is one reason I'm skeptical of getting fios service.

The phone companies really should be in the business of selling commodity bandwidth. No, I don't want your friggen' music video service, I want to access the video service I choose. The problem is that you don't make larger than normal profits selling commodities.

So instead, the phone companies do everything they can to make comparing their prices and service impossible. Their bills are full of portentous sounding charges, and they bury things anybody would really want to know, like whether your phone has the Bluetooth profiles it needs to connection your laptop to the Internet, under piles of crap services nobody in their right mind would buy. I'm convinced those services don't have to make money, they just have to make the decision of which carrier to choose more confusing.

Then there is simply the practice of making "mistakes" on how the bill is calculated, counting on the fact that the bill is structured to be confusing to help them get away with it. I just added a second line to my wife's Verizon mobile service, which involved upgrading to a more expensive plan. They "pro-rated" her service for the month by crediting out the cheaper service, and back dating the more expensive service to the start of the month. For good measure they added a couple of completely unexplained gobbledygook charges that doubled the bill. I'm going to have to spend hours dealing with this, hours of my life I have much better use for and which I'll never get back.

That's why I'm chary of getting fios, even though it looks better on paper. I don't want Verizon to be my content vendor in any case, and they've been underhanded as a bandwidth vendor. As bad as Comcast is, my experiences with Verizon have been worse. If I'd never dealt with them before, I'd have jumped with fios, that looks cheaper and faster on paper. For now it looks better to let my bandwidth hog neighbors jump into long term fios contracts and stay put at least until the DOCSIS 3 stuff is rolled out.

If Google jumps into bed with Verizon, it's an interesting choice; I'm not sure whether any of the vendors are better or worse with respect to being evil, but Verizon is making a major push to become a content vendor. Evil or not, this is not an outfit that is interested in letting net neutrality survive; but Google has up until now built a business around net neutrality. Google is everything AOL was supposed to be to the consumer, except that it's all about access to the universe of other peoples' content. We should look very carefully at whatever deal Google cuts with the carriers, because a shift away from philosophy could be a step towards leveraging their search monopoly into a content distribution monopoly.

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[geeknado]

Like many providers, your experience with different vendors is going to vary by locality. Here, Comcast is totally disfunctional as a conseqeunce of multiple ownership changes to the local cable franchise...It's been, over the course of the last 10 years, Comcast, Cox, AT&T, and now Comcast again. The surrounding counties followed a similar, but disparate pattern. As a consequence, their systems aren't even integrated properly from a customer service perspective, and the maintenance of the infrastructure is not what it should be.

All this leads to Verizon being a better choice here than it might be in some areas. Also, and again, this may be a local thing, but the FIOS service division is totally distinct from the 'normal' Verizon service structure you usually encounter. Different techs, at any rate-- they're much better trained, and reports are that the service is extremely reliable. It's only just become available in my neighborhood, though, so I can't speak firsthand...Although it's being installed tomorrow, so we'll see.

I dunno, neither Comcast nor Verizon has its hands clean as far as most of the 'evil' sorts of issues the Slashdot "we" care about. Comcast throttles services, Verizon complies with the gov't on domestic wiretaps...You're pretty much boned either way.

Re:Mobile phones + do no evil?

[tompaulco]

My hope is Google will not allow the parent companies to work with third party scam companies that blind text kids with messages which if they reply to it automatically sign them up for monthly subscription plans to lame jokes and crap like that.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, see my journal.

Get a Move On

[jlf278]

What's taking so long? Google and Verizon please hurry up and introduce a sleek new phone to compete with the iPhone so my wife will stop nagging me to pay the early termination fee on her verizon contract. It's in all our best interests a true win/win/win.

Re:Get a Move On

[paintballer1087]

Verizon is a CDMA network, whereas AT&T/Cingular is a GSM Network, the phones are incompatible with each other. The iPhone can only be unlocked on GSM networks. Here's an article that explaines the difference in the two types of networks: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-gsm-and-cdma.htm

Re:Get a Move On

[ksattic]

Both are digital.

Re:Get a Move On

[krazytekn0]

My contention is that Google is simply incompatible with Verizon, protocols aside, verizon wireless has a long history of imposing ultimatums onto phone manufacturers and software publishers. Motorola is a great example, a verizon Razr only has about half the features as one that you buy from Motorola. Google maps mobile doesn't work on CDMA phones because none of the carriers (Verizon specifically) will let anyone make any kind of navigation software for a phone that the user doesn't have to pay a premium membership for. The list goes on and on, can't put Java on a verizon phone because *gasp* the user may be able to play games for free on their own piece of hardware! Or worse yet, write some piece of software specifically for themselves.

Re:Get a Move On

[Pascoea]

I think you missed the point of his post. I would assume (hopefully correctly) that the majority of the people here know the difference between CDMA and GSM. If you don't already know the difference, maybe this article could be of some use. How to jump from a moving car [wikihow.com]

Re:Get a Move On

[nuba]

All those things work on their higher end phones like the Treo. A phone from google would probably be in the same category.

Actually, 3 US Networks

[VengefulCynic]

Reading the article, all accounts have it that Google has been in talks with T-Mobile for some time and now is in talks with both Verizon and Sprint. If it can net all three carriers to leverage phones with the Google OS, that would be far more than 6 million customers.

First, maybe, but not THE

[Chairboy]

Based on Google's public stance on information, I would guess that Verizon might be the first, but not the _only_ cell provider that provides Google-centered telephony. If you watch their lectures and listen to what their spokesmen say, you'll see that Google's interests are in having ubiquitous access to the 'cloud' (their term), meaning that the lines between being online and offline blur to invisibility.

Locking in w/ one carrier doesn't match that goal, especially when you consider their interest in the 700mhz band.

My guess is that if Google makes their break for ubiquity, it will be viral. They'll release a 'Killer setup' on, say, a Verizon phone. Then a few months later, it'll be on a GSM phone, and a few months later, maybe on Some New Thing that hasn't been revealed yet. It'll be a useful set of apps/tools that's "just too useful" for the cell providers to ignore, while so cheap that they can't rationalize building competitive software.

Isn't single carrier iPhone's "problem"?

[magarity]

I don't get it - isn't the killer phone one that's sufficiently cool like ye olde iPhone yet goes with any carrier? Wouldn't a go-anywhere phone be a better move? I won't get any fancy phone that leaves me stuck with one carrier. It's enough that my freebie phone only works with who gave it to me but if I were to pay for one, I'd want it to go anywhere. Bad car analogy: My Honda isn't restricted to only Honda gas or only Honda streets. Whereas all the people who bought locomotives can only go where B&O lays tracks.

Re:Smells of...

[jargon82]

Couple good points there. Google has alot of technical know-how, but sometimes it seems the business sense of actually delivering a solid, working solution is not there. Google groups are a good example. There was a google group name I was interested in getting hold of, which had been registered but never used. I have as yet found no mechanism for requesting this group name, leading me to believe that someone could essentially grab every possible name and lock everyone else out, like domain names all over again... except without the cost of acquisition.
Relatively minor, but the point is little things like this can have a big impact on perceptions.

Verizon? That would be bizarre.

[RobertB-DC]

I finally broke with Verizon and switched to T-Mobile, partly because the Verizon phones are impossible to hack without breaking through the wall of Get It Now. Verizon's entire business model would seem to be antithetical to Google's stated desire (with $billions behind it) to open up the wireless spectrum to any device, and to put the device owner in control.

In fact, it's not surprising that the article notes that "Google had already made significant progress in recent months with" T-Mobile. While not perfect (my daughter's phone won't let her use anything but $2 downloads for ringtones), T-Mobile is at least based on a more open technology (from what I understand). The surprise is that Verizon would even talk to Google at all. Maybe they aren't -- the article is based on "people familiar with the matter". Those "people" could be from Google, trying to kick-start talks with Verizon by putting the news on the CEO's front porch via the WSJ.

And Sprint

[jav1231]

Yahoo! reports it's down to Verizon and Sprint. I'm hoping Sprint! :)

Hegemony

[whisper_jeff]

"...could this be "the deal" that establishes Google's hegemony in the internet sphere."

Ok, maybe I'm missing something, but haven't they already established their leadership roll on the internet? Really, is there a company out there more influential than Google when it comes to the internet?

Hmmm

[rotide]

Frankly, I'm not sure what to think about this.

First, I was under the impression that Google would make a physical iPhone competitor as well as its own OS/Software. This OS/Software would also be open to 3rd Parties to create apps/additional tools for it.

Second, I was hoping it would be open to any carrier. Obviously, some tools might only be usable on some networks as maybe not all carriers support a particular technology. Perhaps you would have to search for the carrier that best suited your wishes for your phone functionality.

Verizon... Unfortunately, I had the displeasure of working for a particular customer that had a lot of Fractional T1's that were supported by Verizon, at least at the LEC level. Now, I don't know what the rest of you know, but working with them on a Business to Business level was absolutely HORRIBLE.

Here is a particular scenario that would play out ALL the time (This is a little Off Topic, but I just want to color the picture as to why I hate Verizon).

One of my Frac T1's would go down. ATT would determine that there was a problem in the LEC network, maybe a bad Demarc, something in their C.O., etc. AT&T would load a ticket to them for Dispatch to troubleshoot. Verizon would reply with "Pending Tech Pickup" (basically meaning they were waiting for a tech to answer the page to accept the job). The ticket would get stuck in this state all day until end of business. At this point, Verizon would push the ticket back to AT&T as "This will have to go out 1st AM as it is now End-of-Business". The next day the process would repeat. Sometimes for 2 to 3 days in a row.

Now I remind you this was how they treated BUSINESS service.

I've also heard that customer service, end users, non-business users, actually LIKE them and find them friendly and helpful. But I don't know why this is? Seperate business units with seperate management? They just hate other businesses? I'm not sure. But I simply can't STAND Verizon after banging my head against the wall trying to get them to fix a damn fractional T1 for a business.

Re:Are google shipping a phone or only an OS?

[smilindog2000]

Consensus on the net seems to be that Google will provide software to cell-phone vendors, and will not make a phone themselves. Computers have changed the world partly because we geeks everywhere can program them. Cell phone companies have, through their evil-genius, restricted application development on phones, holding back the inevitable mobile computing revolution. Microsoft has done such a poor job of Windows CE for so many years, that they kind of killed the demand for mobile computing. The OS-es provided by the cell phone vendors are even worse. I personally suspect that Google has sensed this weakness in Microsoft, and hope to own the mobile OS market. Not that I'm gunning for the downfall of Microsoft, but I can hardly wait to get hold of the software Google could be writing. I just hope they display their legendary vision and get it right.

OS discussion

[steffens]

I would tend to believe that verizon can find a large correlation between the users who utilize their higher end services (data, web, extremely high minutes usage) and the front end on those phones. I have a feeling that this is not the normal "I use this phone because it was the free" type user, but rather the users who spring for the higher end phones (Q, Q9, Treo etc.. all of which aren't crippled by the standard verizon OS). It seems like for awhile verizon has gotten away with their crippled front end because they placed it on a trendy form factor, namely the razor and all of it's iterations. I would assume they have realized for awhile that the market has been saturated with stylish form factor phones and they going to have to step up their front end soon if they want to keep the users satisfied enough to not migrate to one of the other companies.

If my gross assumptions are on the mark, I bet the people at verizon think it would be a pretty sweet deal to get a company that is inherently trusted by the average consumer to do the redesign that they so desperately need.

Most phones with a 'real' web experience are $$$$$

[gelfling]

Almost every cell phone has some rudimentary web ability but the phones that affect a real computer browser web experience are EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE and all rebated according to the size of the DATA plan you buy not the phone plan. An iPhone, Nokia N95, HTC Active or Mogul, a Cingular 8225 - these are all $400-500-600 devices.

So either Google figures those customers are price insensitive or, they figure that the phone companies will do this for free to cannibalize their own incredibly profitable network services. I mean why offer picture mail at those inflated prices when anyone can post up something in Picasa?

No I think this will be ANOTHER service cost addr to the service you get. Which I guess is ok for some people. But I already bleed enough money to the phone company.

And oh - GSM means no Sprint.

Vaporware?

[DerekLyons]

Google is possibly in talks regarding phones using an OS speculated to exist?
 
Does Google need this kind of slashvertisement, or is it just a slow news day?

Yay! A one-stop shop for privacy violations.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Great. Now Google will not only know what I search for but also who I talk to on the phone....

The weird and scary part about this is the number of slashdotters who can't wait for this to happen.

So let me get this straight. AT&T as a communication monopoly is bad. Microsoft as a operating systems monopoly is bad. Google as a monopoly on all things data is good? Let me clarify: Google as an all knowing overseer of all things being communicated is good??

We worry about the government tracking us, but not a corporation that derives it's income from targeted ads??

Where can I get some of this google kool-aid?

Verizon wireless != /= Verizon

[wiredlogic]

Different companies.