Google Begins Taunting Cell Phone Carriers

Written by Adam Gosling

Thursday, 19 July 2007

Page 1 of 2 Earlier this year there was a lot of rumour and speculation about the potential for Google to get into the smartphone business. The pundits were all a little hyped and excited about the iPhone announcement. Though the idea of Google as a handset manufacturer was a bit far fetched, the Googleplex have since made it clear that mobile phones are a place the company sees itself in the future - maybe as a platform player. We've already reported the news that Google has started testing the AdSense platform on mobile Web sites, now a report in The Wall Street Journal claims the company is developing a search service specifically for cell phone content. That's not the regular Web content you frequent with your PC, but ringtones, games and other specifically mobile content usually pushed to subscribers in a walled garden approach or through marketing campaigns either on their PCs or in more traditional media such as magazines and TV commercials. The WSJ claims Google wants to take mobile search beyond the traditional Google home page delivered over mobile Internet and has visions of itself becoming a gateway that not only finds your content but helps you pay for it also. The new system would, for example, let you search for a ringtone, select from a list of providers and offer up the link to buy the content online. Of course, the search results would ultimately include "sponsored links" in much the same way it offers text link adverts on its Web search engine results. "Overall, the service would work much like the Google Product Search service, formerly known as Froogle," claims the story and the Gmail email service could act as a place to exchange content. According to the report, it turns out this is a little harder to organise than you might expect. The report says that Google has been cooperating with large content owners and some content aggregators to try to get all this content searcheable online, but there's been a few delays caused by technical hiccups. Rather than technical hurdles, one would think the project would be set back by competitive stumbling blocks as traditional players fight to maintain control over the customer's spending. If Google, as you would expect, brings PayPal and/or its own Checkout service into the equation, groundsmen in the walled garden are not going to be happy. What remains to be seen is whether Google is planning a predatory assault intended to gain control over mobile payments an area traditionally monopolised by the carriers. It should make for interesting reading. Apart from the Net Neutrality fights Google has been having with cable companies in the U.S. over the past year or two, a new battleground has opened up concerning the regulation of wireless spectrum which incumbent carriers believe they have a natural right to. << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>