There's been a spate of stories about Google doing a mobile phone -- none of them from me because, frankly, I suspect they are complete tosh. Unfortunately, I don't have any evidence either way. However, it would represent a major break with Google's business model and its current approach to the software- and search-based advertising business, as a couple of Google's staff have now confirmed.
A story headed Google quashes mobile phone talk in the Sydney Morning Herald provides examples. Vint Cerf points out that "becoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model," while Richard Kimber, Google's South-East Asia managing director of sales and operations, adds: "At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone."
So far, Google has targeted the biggest markets, which is why it creates software for Windows first, why it's digitising whole libraries, and why it's working to get into radio and television advertising. In that context, it makes perfect sense for Google to try to get its search engine and email service used from a billion mobile phones. Actually selling 10m or even 100m phones makes much less sense.
In other words, it should be partnering with the companies that supply mobile phones and network services, not competing with them.
That doesn't mean Google won't do a phone now or in the future: sometimes companies do things that are not in their best interests. But if Google is aiming to get the maximum profit for the minimum investment in the phone market, it's doing software, not hardware.
