gPhone, gGPS and gMaps
Rumor has it that Google would be announcing there ‘gPhone’ soon, probably sometime after September 3rd and the most authoritative source seems to be rizzn.com. What it will be is still a mystery. There are rumors that Google may just provide a platform for phone manufacturers, based on linux. But no one has yet ruled out an actual hardware from Google. Since I don’t have an inside contact in Google, I don’t have any first hand or groundbreaking information.
But I have been poking around and I believe that Google will be entering into the cell space. Those who have checked Google Maps would have noticed that a lot of updates have gone into it. As far as India is concerned many major cities have been updated with street names, hospitals, schools and places of interest. Some streets are marked as one-way. Obviously Google is going to provide GPS in all major cities. India, China, Singapore, Malaysia and countless other countries are in the list. It also proves that Google thinks those countries to push ahead of others as far as mobile penetration is concerned. Go ahead and check out https://maps.google.com and find out whether your city is getting Google coverage.
If the rumors are true, then a major hurdle would be the lack of bandwidth over mobile phone, not to forget the cost involved. According to rediff.com Google is negotiating with Airtel, and I think that bandwidth and cost might be the major topic. Can we look forward to have better bandwidth at a cheap price, maybe for free? Considering Google’s philosophy of free internet and precedence of providing advertisement based services, anything might happen.