Googlemania!

In case you hadn’t heard, Google Inc. is interested in mobility. There’s no official statement from the search giant as to exactly how it plans on going mobile, but a frenzy of rumors and speculation about an imminent “Googlephone” or “gPhone” have reached critical mass this week.

The blogosphere is a-twitter with word that Google will launch a $100, low-cost smartphone in the first half of 2008, and that the announcement will come any day now. The consensus seems to be that rather than compete with the iPhone, Google will stay clear of taking on Apple in the high-end wars, instead championing its “open Internet for all” cause with a Linux operating system and integrated Google applications familiar to us from the Web, including Google maps and Gmail. It will be configured to work on any network, “insiders” say.

That’s not all. BusinessWeek claims that a source “familiar with the situation” told it that gPhone is actually not a handset at all, but rather an operating system designed to combat Palm OS, Nokia’s Symbian hegemony and Windows Mobile. Back in August 2005 Google did acquire Android, a software company that had developed a Linux-based mobile device operating system, after all.

Engadget thinks it’s going to be a combination of the two lines of rumors, with the OS definitely the main focus, and that Google will work with manufacturers to create a phone around it.

Bloggers everywhere are happier than a 3-year-old in a mud puddle at the developments, taking the basic leaked outline of Google’s plans and running with them. “Google may go MVNO!” says one. “No, Google is upset about the iPhone’s new, lower price tag and is going back to the drawing board.” Actually, “Google is hiring a crack team of Indian engineers to create the perfect smartphone at a low cost,” says one.

The interest level is warranted, of course. Google may very well change the face of mobility as we know it, if its market clout is enough to advance its open-access agenda in a meaningful way. And it’s an irresistible topic for bloggers, who see it having a large, vast, shadowy dominance, sharpened by Google’s surrounding silence on the topic.

What we do know about Google’s mobile initiatives is this: Google is working with Sprint Nextel to design a mobile Web portal for the service provider’s planned WiMAX network, which may or may not morph into a bigger role on the device side. Google will also likely participate in January’s 700MHz spectrum auction, for which it lobbied the FCC long and hard to create an open access requirement for those airwaves, making the walled garden a thing of the past. And Google has made a patent filing for a mobile phone-based payments service this week.

Google itself stated: "We don't comment on market rumor or speculation. However, Google is committed to providing users with access to the world's information, and mobile becomes more important to those efforts every day. We're collaborating with partners worldwide to bring Google search and applications to mobile users everywhere. However, we have nothing to announce at this time.”

Tantalizing though the rumors may be, we won’t know for certain until we know. Will Google play in applications, handsets, OS, take on a service provider role? All of the above? Regardless of where it heads, Google is certain to make a dent in the mobile landscape. But for now, we must breathlessly stand by.

Google Inc. www.google.com

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