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Why Google gPhone Matters to Me

Do I care just because I am a Google fanboy? Not exactly, although that does amp up my excitement
By David Weinberger
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November 5, 2007 06:15 AM EST
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 12,704

David Weinberger's Blog

An article in the WSJ today, which they have chosen to make inaccessible to bloggers, reports that Google is talking to Verizon and Sprint about using the Google phone operating system. Money makes such strange bedfellows!

Do I care just because I am a Google fanboy? Not exactly, although that does amp up my excitement. With an open platform for development for mobiles, plus Google's conquest of Jaiku for its mobile/presence capabilities — I am a big fan of Jyri Engestrom, the founder of Jaiku, a smart and innovative person devoted to the Net's common good — this could be the disruption that turns mobile phones from annoying bricks of bad reception into a platform for apps that can assume constant presence and that know where we are and who our friends are. It could make FaceBook look like CompuServ.

Or, of course, the rumors could be wrong, the implementation could suck, the lawyers and lawmakers could screw it up, or it could fail in the market. But if ever a market was ripe for disruption — an archaic system bottling up the power of having everyone present in your pocket — it's the mobile market.

Here's hoping. [Tags: google mobiles jaiku presence facebook everything_is_miscellaneous ]

continued...

[Reprinted by kind permission of the author. This blog post - except for copyrighted material from the book Everything Is Miscellaneous, or other copyrighted sources - is republished under a Creative Commons License, which supersedes any other copyright notice on the template of this site.]

Published November 5, 2007 – Reads 12,704
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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David is the author of JOHO the blog (www.hyperorg.com/blogger). He is an independent marketing consultant and a frequent speaker at various conferences. "All I can promise is that I will be honest with you and never write something I don't believe in because someone is paying me as part of a relationship you don't know about. Put differently: All I'll hide are the irrelevancies."

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gPhone News Desk 11/01/07 10:54:43 AM EDT

Do I care just because I am a Google fanboy? Not exactly, although that does amp up my excitement. With an open platform for development for mobiles, plus Google's conquest of Jaiku for its mobile/presence capabilities - I am a big fan of Jyri Engestrom, the founder of Jaiku, a smart and innovative person devoted to the Net's common good - this could be the disruption that turns mobile phones from annoying bricks of bad reception into a platform for apps that can assume constant presence and that know where we are and who our friends are. It could make FaceBook look like CompuServ.