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03:46 PM
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03:26 PM
Yes, I am living the dream!
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03:43 PM
Was hidden in the second paragraph.
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02:31 PM
Yesterdays code from google.com/phone
/www.google.com/support/phone/bin/resource/js_validate_static
StartHour
StartMinutes
StartSeconds
/www.google.com/intl/en/images/logos/android_logo.gif
/www.google.com/android/
(Product home)
/www.google.com/support/phone/
Or do you think that this is just prep for a more robust developers portal? Or they hit a snag and have to put off the release of the phone until later which is why they removed it?
02:53 PM
03:22 PM
It's just a completely unrelated easter egg.
02:21 PM
If it were false, Google would have most likely denied the rumors by now.
But more importantly --
Google already gives their software services away for "free" to users. So, selling a mobile phone for close to cost fits perfectly into their current model. What better way to get more people using more Google services, resulting in more ad revenue?
It's completely obvious this will happen.
Did everyone forget the FCC auction where Google bid up the spectrum deliberately to trigger the open handset clause??
Sell an unlocked superphone at cost, increase dependence on your services and your ad revenues. What's not to understand?
02:42 PM
Setting aside, for a moment, the "Google's gonna make a VoIP-only phone" rumor...take Google selling the hardware off-contract. HTC is the one developing the hardware. They have a stake in this, too. Furthermore, they don't have a huge ad business on the side to subsidize their development.
Typical smartphone teardowns tend to reveal hardware and manufacturing costs alone between $100-200. Google can afford to do their development pro bono. They're already doing Android dev work for free anyway. Or at least without licensing fees. But what about HTC? They have to develop hardware. And the development isn't free. And neither are their profits. As long as Google gets the phone into people's hands, they stand to make money. HTC doesn't have that luxury. Making the phone cost less than other, comparable smartphones off-contract is feasible. Fully subsidizing it down to $200 or less is less likely. Not impossible, but less likely. This is really the only rumor that could possibly hold up to scrutiny.
Now, for the VoIP, data-only, circumvent the carriers, viva la revolucion! thing...
Google only just recently acquired Gizmo5 for a VoIP service. It's likely that feature is coming, but it's simply too soon. Additionally, when it comes to user services, Google tends to start with a broad beta. Get a bunch of core users in, slowly drum up hype while testing the software, eventually release. Google Voice right now is, at best, a switchboarding service. Not a voice carrier. The likelihood that Google will have finished developing their recent Gizmo5 acquisition to become a full VoIP package, replacing the need for the voice plan for anyone using Google Voice which, may I remind everyone, is still currently a closed beta, all by January? Not. a. chance.
Google may yet just turn the telcos on their head by providing services themselves and reverting carriers to dumbpipes. But it's not happening in the next few weeks.
Though, selling a phone off-contract for a decent price would be plenty to shake this industry up. Of course, there's still a lot of math in Google's way to doing that.
Then again, Google is pretty good at that math stuff. ;-)
03:01 PM
I've got to admit you've done a nice job of laying out why it won't be that way but I still don't really understand why it would be the other way either.
What would google have to gain by selling just an unlocked phone? We all agree that there isn't anything special in that and that its not likely to take anything by storm. Anything it got off the handful of phones it would likely sell like that would be a drop in the bucket for google.
Maybe its going to be one of its many ideas that it tries to do before it makes sense (Chrome OS) but I don't see why it would.
03:04 PM
I'm not suggesting the Gizmo5 thing will happen in the next couple of weeks.
It is, however, fairly obvious where Google is going with this whole thing.
- FCC Auction / open handset clause
- Gizmo5
- Google Voice
- Previous comments from HTC that Google can also be destructive to the industry
Today's Google phone, however, simply appears to be the off-contract, decent priced alternative to the overpriced crap you see from the likes of Sony E.
For Google to deliver a smartphone to the masses, by selling it at "cost", fits perfectly with their whole vision and revenue model. We'll find out soon enough. :)
03:41 PM
For starters, Google has tons to gain every single time someone uses an Android handset. Especially after the AdMob acquisition. If people click mobile ads, it's possible for Google to earn money. So there's that angle.
The other thing to consider is, whether or not this phone is Keanu Reeves as The One to release people from their cell carriers....it's not something that's outside Google's mind right now either.
Keep in mind that Google has already managed to wrangle more than a few cell phone numbers away from the carriers. As in permanently. If you have a Google Voice number, you don't need to transfer or get a new number. Assuming Google Voice sticks around (the one major caveat), your Google Voice number could easily be your number for life. The number is no longer bound to the carrier. The handset seems to be the next logical step.
Currently, the carriers are more than just connectors. They're service providers. They provide the software to make phone calls and sent text messages, voicemail, etc. For whatever reason they have, Google is slowly wrestling each one of those services away.
And why could easily be something as stupid as "because they want to". Google apparently lives in this fantastical world where they get to reinvent email as a dynamic real-time program that no one understands simply because they think email is too old. Of course, Google usually only deals in software. Self-subsidizing phones would be close to the most expensive endeavor they've ever tried (hundreds of millions without breaking a sweat, possibly billions). Maybe that's worth it to a company that shatters entire industries because they feel like it. Time will tell.
03:55 PM
I don't know if self subsidizing the phones is going to bankrupt the company. Look at all the "free" stuff google offers. None of is anything more than support for the advertising and data mining. I think thats the whole angle with the google phone and why it makes just as much sense now as it would in the future. They subsidize the handset the same way the subsidize the real hardware cost behind everything. Knowing that every x handset they sell = some fraction of x clicks on a mobile ad and to get break even and start turning a profit they just need to get the handset penetration over y amount.
Its no different then the silly math problems they ask when they hire people. Admittedly the fortune of the company rests on this silly little math problem but I have a hard time believing they didn't have a couple people check over it before they just say "eh, lets see what happens."
Time will tell.
02:20 PM
I suspect the Nexus One may be a Dev phone currently, this would fit with stuff Google has done before (giving away the ADP1 and Ion to staff and developers, but lets not forget that both of those phones were also realeased to the public. The whole released unlocked thing also fits in with the Dev phone idea as they obviously would be. Add these things into the hype machine that was talking about a Google phone MONTHS ago, add Fanboyism and just plain hope for a superphone and you would get what we have now.
I do not say that the Nexus One does not exist but I do think we should wait and see what Google has to say before we go completely off the scale.
02:15 PM
All I can is, bring it on losers!
02:52 PM
01:47 PM
The phone isn't the revolutionary part. The distribution of the phone is. We've seen nothing of that so far.
The phone is just a nice piece of hardware. Nothing more nothing less. What google does with the launch of it is the part that matters and that remains to be seen.
02:17 PM
I don't understand why selling it contract free is such a big deal (if thats what your referring to). Unless it is cdma and gsm, which so far it doesn't seem to be, plus it would have to work on every companies 3g, which doesn't look like its happening. Anybody can buy any phone contract free, it's the capabilities of the phone itself that limit it from being truly free from being attached to one provider or another.
This is an honest question on my part, i'm just not getting the hype behind a contract free sale.
02:26 PM
If it was just a contract free sale that happened to have t-mobile 3G why would t-mobile apparently be in the loop already? Like any other just unlocked phone wouldn't they have just sold it and forgot it? For that matter why is it t-mobile's 3G to begin with? You're going to sell an unlocked phone but make it only work at 3G on the smallest (are they still smallest or are they beating sprint now?) provider in the US? For me it all just points to it being something more than "unlocked"
I think the talk of it just being an unlocked phone is misleading. I think its going to be no contract, no etf, all of that but be at a price point thats not only reasonable but down right a good deal. I also think there is going to be a special plan of some sort for it unlike what you can currently get.
If it comes out as a $600 unlocked phone where google basically says "good luck getting service for that" its a fail and I'll be right there in line with everyone else saying "that was stupid." I just don't see why it would be that stupid.
02:36 PM
02:38 PM
I just don't see on any level what google has to gain from just releasing a phone if there isn't something dramatically different in the whole thing.
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02:22 PM
I can't see VZW getting interested in this, or AT&T. Maybe Sprint...maybe. But T-Mobile is just desperate enough - and they have a shiny new 3G network that's not overloaded and which is finally becoming a nationwide presence - and will likely be the fastest 3G network by EOY, and even faster if they move to HSPA+ by mid-2010, as planned.
All of that together could be revolutionary. Wireless carriers as dumb pipes? An open market for handsets subsidized by advertising? It's the difference between a walled garden, a la AOL, and the internet.
03:12 PM
I've been saying most of this time that Google switching the model up drastically doesn't make sense ... but what DOES make sense is this being the next in a line of Dev models that will turn out to be a flagship device for a carrier, just as the G1 and MT3G started out as employee-handouts.
03:25 PM
I also think the idea of the carriers being dumb pipes but I don't think we're that close. T-Mobile's shiny new network is great but it still can't reach the coverage that it would need to pose a serious threat.
So, could Google go there? Yes. Do I think this specific phone is the wedge for it? No.
01:38 PM
Can we get some RROD-type failure hate for Apple here?
01:57 PM
02:07 PM
Interesting.
Thank you for that information.
02:08 PM
02:36 PM
In actuality people are even more upset when a new toy that they are dying to use shows up busted which puts the experience off another few weeks...
03:24 PM
I think equating the two of them to each other is fair, especially since it seems that the flaw is appearing in droves. When you have such a large QA problem, you deserve to be mocked, no matter who you are and you'd damn well admit who is at fault. Remember the problem with nVidia cards in the last gen MBP? Apple tried to say it was all nVidia's fault when they were partially to blame for having insufficient cooling in the case. MS earned all the scorn they got with the driver issues and bloat that came with Vista. The part that's important is how they handle it in the long run, but for now, it's fun to sit back and mock, especially when the product proclaims superiority over every other in the market and is claimed to "just work".
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