Google Phone Inching Closer?

Update (Nov. 5): Google just confirmed the reports we’d heard last week concerning its role in creating a new - and open - cell phone platform. The Open Handset Alliance, a group including Sprint, T-Mobile, Motorola, Samsung, HTC and Google itself, among many others, is set to release the new platform, dubbed Android, sometime in 2008. Techcrunch has the details.

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Yesterday, a Wall Street Journal report revealed a series of specific details swirling around the potential release of the buzzed-about Google Phone. And today, several other news outlets – FOX News and The Washington Post among them – picked up the story, lending more weight to this round of “gPhone� rumors than we’d seen in the past.

The crux of the story is an interesting deviation from previous breathless reports of a sleek new Google phone right around the corner – in reality, what Google plans to release soon might not be a cell phone at all. Rather, it appears that Google has set its sights on providing an open operating system designed to run on a variety of handsets, regardless of carrier-affiliation.

As it stands now, most U.S. carriers restrict and control the software available to consumers, by licensing applications specific to certain networks and cell phones. Google would like to change that. The new mobile OS would allow anyone to create applications for it (the assumption is that it would be Linux-based), representing a drastic shift in the relationship between consumers, carriers and third parties in the cell phone world.

With very few – if any – built-in restrictions, a Google-driven phone would likely support GPS tracking, WiFi, and high-speed 3G networks, along with the multimedia features found in today’s high end cell phones. These features do exist today in phones like the AT&T BlackBerry 8820, the Verizon Wireless Samsung i730, or Sprint’s HTC Mogul 6800.

The difference is that an open platform also encourages the development of more innovative software; if the “Google phone” concept were to take off, it could spur some pretty fascinating stuff.

The term “Google phone” could come to represent functionality rather than form; while the iPhone shoots for the exclusive cachet that comes with brand ownership, the gPhone seems aimed at inclusiveness – perhaps with omnipresence as the end goal. By pushing its flexible product onto the cell phone screens of third-party manufacturers, it’s clear Google would like to make an aggressive run at the mobile advertising and content market.

PS: Don’t let this news convince you that there won’t be an actual Google handset on the horizon. Those rumors do still swirl.