Google on the Mobile Market

Google on the Mobile Market

November 9, 2007

What is Google up to? Its stock price trading at more than $741 with $231 billion in market cap, no wonder it is taking the finance and internet world by storm. Google search, as we traditionally conceptualize the company, is no more. It has become a conglomerate with tentacles reaching on the realms of software, advertising and mobile tech.

According to Google's website, the company's mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'. This is the reason why the company continues to procure hip startups or savvy media firms for its organize-the-world portfolio. It has swoop the web 2.0 media-related enterprises ----youtube, doubleclick, picasa, etc.

It is no-brainer ubiquitous mobile communications technology is the future. The IT industry knows this and so does Google. The main problem is the variation of incompatible proprietary solution and market strategies that holds a tight grip on consumers. Telecom carriers has the last say on the apps embedded into their product offerings.

Google visions a ‘universally accessible and useful' communications system through open source. Mash-up of traditional media and communications --- TV, radio, newspaper, advertising and telephone – available through the internet and harnessed by a powerful platform to interface these capabilities at a touch of a button. Google’s recent announcement on its Linux mobile software, Android, allows hardware and software makers to adapt freely. With this latest innovation in mobile software solutions, IT analysts are expecting rapid innovations because carriers will no longer have sole control over their products.

The company has also been on the move to implement an online networking standard, OpenSocial. It allows sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook to create applications for MySpace users. Google has also announced a $900 advertising partnership with MySpace and other websites owned by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media. Indeed, Google is creating footprints across market niches online and beyond.

With the 700 Mhz band of spectrum auction on January 2008, the whole industry is highly speculative on Google’s next move. Clearly, the company has showed interest with FCC’s open access framework policy. Ultimately, Google will prove to be an aggressive bidder.

A powerful ‘700 Mhz spectrum + mobile software Android + WiFi ‘ equates to an explosive breakthrough in the history of Information Technology and Communications (ICT) market. It is not impossible to imagine the possibilities of online advertising in an on-demand information mobile super highway. Users can access free information along 700 Mhz frequency and WiFi technologies which includes advertising program by Google. This agenda is akin to internet and television advertising with a mobile twist.

If course, not everyone is happy with such imminent change. Google has amassed quite a number of detractors/critics on its trail namely:

• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, “[Google] efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile].

• Nokia’s OS Symbian vice president of strategy, John Forsyth said, “Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things. "It's costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones. That's something there's very little experience of in Google's environment.”

• Verizon senior vice president, John Thorne said “The network builders [Verizon or at&t) are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers"
  
  Verizon spends billion of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the US and internet services companies such as Ebay, Google or Yahoo uses it for free.

Have we reached the pinnacle of web 2.0? Is the bubble about to burst? Not quite yet. Google has yet to prove its strategies in action. The past years has been an accumulative effort to gather the best of the best in online technologies. The next five years will be crucial on how information will be rendered ‘universally accessible and useful.'

Good luck, Google.