An in-development project at Google for discovering mobile content through search and enabling payment for it gives us another reason to believe Google will debut a phone and a wireless network.
Mobile Search Another Key To Google Phone
Ringtones and games provide wireless providers with a rich stream of revenue. People willingly pay double the price of a single on iTunes to have a few seconds of “My Humps” blare out of their phones every time someone calls.
Google wants to make it easier to find this content. The Wall Street Journal said Google has undertaken development of a new mobile search service to accomplish this:
With the new system, users would search for a piece of content — say, a U2 ringtone — and get back a list of providers as well as links enabling them to easily purchase the material. Eventually, Google would charge companies for high placement in the search results, much the way it offers “sponsored links” on computer Web searches, the people familiar with the plans say.
Technical problems have delayed the project, according to the Journal’s sources. Google also has to deal with the various content providers and encourage them to get on board.
One might guess that carriers like Sprint and Verizon Wireless are going to sit back and have no problem with Google providing competition to their branded options for games and ringtones. With the right deals in place, maybe that could happen.
After all, Google shares the majority of its AdSense revenue back with its AdSense publisher network partners. But the wireless phone aspect and the ability to control a network and all the ads appearing on it has always looked like something Google would want.
If anything, Google’s work on mobile content search makes a branded phone and wireless network supporting it look even more likely. People would get a free phone, make calls and surf the web for no cost over Google’s miles of dark fiber purchases.
In exchange, Google could deliver its advertisements to those phones, and as an added bonus encourage people to spend money on ringtones and grab the extra revenue from that. This makes us even more inclined to think the Google Phone will show up one day and truly disrupt the wireless phone industry.
