Google’s New Phone Will Do Much, Much More

Andy Rubin had a meeting with Google’s Larry Page that turned out much better than he expected it to. Rubin, the inventor of the Sidekick phone, wanted Page to give his endorsement to his new telephone software called Android. An article by Daniel Roth in this month’s Wired gives the blow by blow. The story relates how after a short visit, Page turned to Rubin and offered to buy the program for $50 million.

The Google phone will be like nothing ever imagined. That’s because they’ve broken the tradition of telephony software being kept a secret and are asking developers all over the world to write new, open programs to run on Android, which will power this new generation of phones. Verizon and AT&T remain hold-outs, refusing to allow Android on their handsets or networks. Yet T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel are joining the search giant to not only allow these phones on their networks, but collaborate on another project called Clearwire which will be ten times better than Wi-Fi, and allow web browsing in unheard of places.

Google sent Dan Morrill out to meet with what they thought would be a hand full of phone software programmers, and at each stop around the globe, the rooms were mobbed.Everyone wants to write this new code, and the ideas include:

*A GPS enhanced social network that lets you track your friends in real time and plan impromptu meet-ups.

*A channel that plays cooking videos and provides ingredient lists, as well as providing directions to the nearest grocery stores to buy them.

*You hold the phone over a product bar code and are taken to reviews and price comparisons of the product, or for music, online samples of the tunes.

There is little to lose and lots to gain for Google, who of course will find a way to run text or voice ads that go along with all of these free or sort of free cool features. Just like the laptop is replacing the desktop, soon the little handheld phone will be the way we connect to the ‘Net.