Google Attack On the Mobile Market Rumored

xchg writes in with a somewhat speculative, though plausible, piece from WiseAndroid claiming that Google is gearing up for an all-out assault on the mobile-phone market that will include a new, Google-branded handset and the first comprehensive Google phone service with unlimited free calls. "The real breakthrough, however, will come with the marriage of the Googlephone to Google Voice, the Californian company’s high-tech phone service. Google Voice gives US users a free phone number and allows unlimited free calls to any phone in the country — landline or mobile. International calls start from... just over a penny a minute. Google Voice also uses sophisticated voice recognition to turn voicemails into emails, can block telemarketing calls automatically and offers free text messaging. Google sounded its intentions two weeks ago when it purchased a small company called Gizmo5... [E]xperts are predicting that the Googlephone will be launched in the US early next year."

Comments

The carriers will attempt to unite and squash this

[BuckaBooBob]

This will be very interesting to see how this will work out as every Cell Phone Carrier will do what ever they can to Quash this as its attacks their revenue streams.

This should prove to be an interesting battle as google has the funding to fight tooth and nail to ensure the cell carriers don't lock them out.

Where is the network?

[zogger]

At first I thought, whoa, the google phone company, then I broke down and RTFA....You still need a "plan" of some sort from a carrier unless you are using this google phone at some free leeched wifi spot or at home on your network. If you are at home..no need for a special phone, just use your headset and the software like you are now.

If this takes off and people drop voice and go to data only plans, the carriers will just restrict the heck out of them, maybe even dropping the caps from five gigs to one gig, then a hundred bucks a gig after that, whatever they say, or stop offering data only plans, etc. In other words, they aren't going to get "cut out", you will still be horking over ca$h to attverizonsprint whatever.

I am digging on much better quality phones though..eventually I think the mobile phone will more or less be your computer, and at home you'll just have a wireless connected screen and keyboard and mouse, etc with some NAS action.

Re:Creative destruction

[symbolset]

People with half a brain are realizing Google is becoming the greatest corporate evil ever.

Um, until I actually see google doing something evil, I'm going to have to not believe you here. AT&T isn't exactly the corporate version of Rainbow Brite. Their evil is less theoretical and more actual. Google can do this to the phone companies because they're outrageously overcharging for their products. They pretend to be competing but it's obvious that what's happening is not a free market dynamic.

Like the market for software, cellular services is a space where the cost of the invention is fully paid back several times over and the incumbent providers are engaging in rent-seeking behavior. All Google has to do to threaten that model is not participate in it, and instead offer a value and quality proposition. Maybe after Google rationalizes the cellular networks they will get into content distribution or Pharma. That would be nice. There's no lack of rent-seeking industries for Google to assimilate so this could go on for quite a long time.