Google Phone? Nope
A European Google Exec stated that Google was talking to Samsung to build a phone. The blogs, then other media forums, ran with the story as if Google was developing a phone. (Most likely to get people’s attention due to the hype of the iPhone.)
In short order, a Google VP, Alan Eustace dismissed the Google Phone assumptions, and stated they were creating software for phones. What does this mean? It means a lot of things that were already created for the mobile phone. (ie Google Maps, search, G-Mail and more.)
The areas of software development I would focus on is Google Maps and Search. On top of this I would focus on Google’s Director of Research Peter Norvig. Peter Norvig is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) mad man. Combine the knowledge of Google Maps, your desires through Google Search and AI software that is able to learn what you like… you have an intelligent advisor that can suggest ideas to you.
This is concept is not new. Eric Schmidt has been touting it for sometime now. When he is at a conference and says, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you searched in your mobile phone and wanted pizza, and the phone told you about a great pizza store as per your location’.
Think about this for a second, and what it takes to make this work, along with the potential of local advertising via this medium.
All the components are in place except the unifying software (as far as I know). But the recent talk of the Google Phone did reveal, at least to me, Google is in testing phase of this software that will unify their other services, and add a personal twist to the result of your search.
The only one thing that may find complex would be to trust whether or not the pizza store is ‘great’. IMO, Zagat or other User generated rating systems can be tied into the software.
Now I do not know about the specific electrical components needed to make this work via a mobile phone, and maybe Google didn’t either. So they talked to Samsung Engineers to develop one as per their specifications the software would require.
