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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."
... of a large industry, telecoms... but that is progress!
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.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
wouldn't this, if true, lead to a pretty massive shakeup in the telcom industry? i would imagine at the very least the pricing of plans would have to change drastically
google has the funding to fight tooth and nail to ensure the cell carriers don't lock them out.
and in contrast to all the phone carriers, a large percentage of people like, or at least respect the company. I can pretty much only see some good coming out of this.
This is all very interesting but Google Voice barely functions when calling internationally. And I've had horrible luck with it domestically too.
I've been trying to use this service for a while now and it consistently connects me to random numbers in the country I'm calling (yes, I'm dialing the right number and I'm dialing correctly). When I actually do connect to some random person, they can't hear me 4 out of 5 times (and that's being generous).
When calling domestically, I get connected to who I'm calling, but 50% of the time one of us can't hear the other. Very irritating.
So, until they can actually guarantee that their service, you know, WORKS, this isn't something I'm remotely interested in. Google Voice isn't even close to ready for anything beyond a fun little service to play with.
find . -name "noobs" -print | xargs rm -rf && echo "pwnd."
Google called it Android because the planet from where they all come from has lots of Androids. And Oprah, Laura Bush, as well as Michelle Obama are secretly having babies from the top guys of Google.
I think that should cover all the conspiracies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How are they monopolists of information? In fact, have you seen them ILLEGALLY enforce their natural monopoly? Have you seen them do illegal actions to take over markets? If so, please provide the proof of that. Otherwise, Cayate la boca, chica.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Remember when web mail providers were giving like 4Mb of mailbox capacity, and then Google came with 2Gb (oh, yes, and a spam filter that actually worked)? Most providers didnt vanished, just had to adapt and still are here, giving a better service to their costumer. For cellphone industry that is something very needed, someone that come with a disruptive idea and weight enough behind to actually push it. Wont kill all companies, but to survive they will have to improve, not just giving the latest gizmo and charging you a lot.
Here's another data point for a random end-user: I've used Google Voice to the tune of approximately 1200 minutes per month for the last four months and haven't experienced service issues with receiving calls or placing calls. I've made very few international calls, however.
I haven't used it for outbound calls, but I quite enjoy the many calls from far away numbers that I receive badly transcribed in my inbox from people quitting their jobs, or going on vacation, or trying to find out why their girlfriend hasn't called them back. It's a form of entertainment.
It would just go over the air as data. For example, 1500 minutes of G729a voice uses (4.12kB/s * 60 seconds * 1500 minutes) = 370 MB
The question is what kind deal Google could cut with the carriers to provide nothing more than 370MB a month of data transit.
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.
The article says
For the first time, a single company will control everything from the software in users’ phones to the services they use to make calls and surf the web.
But wait, every phone I've ever had the hardware, software, and services were controlled 100% by my phone carrier. So in that way, the Google phone would be the same.
To me, the difference is that I trust the hardware, software, and services from Google, but I don't for a second trust AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. They have proven that they refuse to provide products and services that I want, but Google has proven that they very much understand and want to provide the products and services that I want. I share the privacy concerns about Google, but at this point I'm just being vigilant, watching for Google to violate my trust. So far so good.
Google! Please put the dinosaurs out of business! I want to stop giving them my money! I want to give you my money for better services!
I assume Google will beta test a phone like this in-house. I will be watching for Google employees carrying something unusual as they walk across the street on the Santa Clara campus.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
RTFA, folks. Google is far, far from posing a threat to the wireless carriers. VOIP over Wi-Fi is one thing, but VOIP over 3G wireless (or whatever) is something else entirely, something that the actual carriers have the means, and certainly the motivation, to fuck with at will (as we have already seen). Unless/until Google starts putting up their own towers, there is nothing new here, at least nothing revolutionary or "game changing".
Or will the carriers detect a "foreign" SIM card and block access, similar to how my AT&T phone won't work on a Sprint cell network.
Actually, this particular instance is not a case of Sprint rejecting a Ma Bell SIM card, it's a case of two entirely different wireless technologies. AT&T and T-Mobile in the US run on a more globally accepted standard, known as GSM. However, Verizon and Sprint run on a faster, but less accepted, standard known as CDMA. These two are incompatible with each other; your AT&T phone won't work on the Sprint network because it speaks the wrong language.
Yes, I remember that, but I am also thinking of these things called towers. They ain't cheap and you need thousands and thousands of them along with all the cellular electronic radio doo dads (hi tech speak there). I mean, maybe google could pull it off, but it would take all their spare cash, then some to do it.
The majors let the smaller guys in on the action, but they charge them well, all the pre paid guys, but if google was cutting into their voice plan cash...I doubt they would lease space to them.
Either way though I want to see much better and cheaper phones, and google and android and linux will help push it..
Google makes me nervous as it continues to expand into new markets. I may not like most of the other companies that Google is going up against but they don't bother me. Why not? Because I understand what motivates them: profit and self-interest. That's black and white.
"Don't be evil", though, that's getting a bit subjective. Sure, most everyone will agree that evil is bad, at least in theory, but in practice coming to an agreement on the definition of evil is difficult. If Google wins, they're subjecting me to their definition of good, which I may or may not agree with. I like my bad guys to be bad...I like knowing they're trying to rip me off and take advantage of me. I don't want them doing things because they think it's best for me.
In other words, if I'm going to be screwed I want it to be by someone who knows he's screwing me, not by someone who thinks he's doing me a favor.
Google's Android is a huge let down, mostly because of Google's policy of rolling over and allowing us to get fucked by the other supposedly more traditional corporations. Apple says "please don't do multi-touch", they take it out (and fuck us), T-Mobile says "we don't want our customers to tethering" and so Google make it so no-one can tether (and fuck us - I am not even a US customer - how is this happening). Fuck Google and their phones (I have a HTC magic which I will need to hack to get it to do what Rogers told me it could before I bought it - i.e. tether - Rogers don't understand this either). I am saving my pennies and waiting for a Nokia (and maybe the next iteration which will hopefully be lighter). I was always a big fan of Google but they are too big and too much like every other corporation.
All I can say is that this article was well-described as being speculative.
Why?
The article could be accurate in saying that Google is planning an 'attack', but probably only by offering Google Voice on a much broader range of mobiles than it currently is.
Also, I would like to clarify that any data is not the same as any other data. "Real-time" video or voice data certainly has different statistical / spectral / max-latency characteristics as, for example, email, web-browsing, or file downloading (including youtube), and that is the case regardless of whether or not its being pushed through the telephone system (circuit switching) or through a packet-switching network as IP data. In the latter case, however, latency usually becomes somewhat noticeable, so the compromise between price and latency (i.e. quality) is ultimately at the discretion of the end-user.