The “Break it Down” Blog

A lot of folks, including me, was under the impression that the Google Phone (gPhone) was going to be a complete-solution-play like the iPhone, with custom hardware and software coming out of Google.

As NY Times reports (TIP: Install BugMeNot plugin to get around registration) the gPhone is more of an operating system or software play from Google than a hardware one.

The custom operating system has been in development inside Google for more than 2 years, is based on Linux, and most speculate exposes completely support for not only browsing, but for all the Google Office applications. The compatibility across the Google application space is expected to be relatively complete. My guess is if the embedded browser is based on Firefox 3 and the work going into that for supporting web-apps offline, it will make the device a fantastic office device with online synchronization with the Google applications. Not to mention GPS and Google Maps integration. This may explain why the Blackberry has always had a stymied integration with the Google apps and instead of the device being lauded by the Google group.

The twist is that the OS is designed to support advertisements from the ground up, likely integrating them directly into content in an unobtrusive manner that we have become used to with Gmail or other Google apps.

The way I interpreted the NY Times article is that Google is hope vendors adopt this OS as a platform (beating out other embedded platforms like Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.) for their future phones, allowing the advertisement to subsidize the cost of the hardware and other services that the vendors will be selling.

Update #1: Ha, we all saw this coming. New Mobile-Firefox effort for Firefox 3.