Google seems to be in the announcement business these days. Announcements of grand alliances that make a big circle around the future of our interaction with the network. The future of social, is you can take your graph with you. (That’s friends for most people) And the future of mobile computing is that Google wants to stand as the middle man between you and anything you want on the network. (and of course, monetize that position) The phone will be opened up and will be open source.
God knows the phone needs to be opened up in someway– it’s a very crippled interface. If you view voice as just another kind of data, it changes you idea of what a phone should do. Although I think I’ve heard all this before from George Gilder, it was called the rise of the Teleputer.
And I’m afraid I have to agree with Fake Steve Jobs, it’s not a phone, it’s an alliance. Companies join alliances for many reasons, often they do it to slow down progress, maintain the current environment, and protect their current revenue stream. I don’t see alliances creating change, they’re more effective in consolidating change that has already occured.
If you want to instigate change, you need to upset the balance of power. A new element needs to be injected into the competitive mix. Apple’s iPhone has the potential to do this because it re-invents the phone interface on a software platform. This gives it real flexibility, it can learn and adapt. Google is probably looking for the same kind of environment with their alliance. But it’s a long way from alliances to making phone calls. Remember something is only useful when it has users. Not developers, users.
I’m curious to watch the development of the Linux based open phone system “neo1973” (with it’s Matrix reference) at http://www.openmoko.com