Now Hear This!

Building up mobile phone hype that could come to eclipse the immense buzz that surrounded the release earlier this year of Apple Inc.'s iPhone handset, Silicon Valley-based search engine superstar and Wall Street darling Google Inc. is reportedly days away from announcing new software and services that could be used to build "customized Google-powered phones," or gPhones.

According to a report published earlier this week by the Wall Street Journal citing "people familiar with the matter," Google is negotiating with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. for the distribution of those handsets. The WSJ has reported that Google's requested specs for the gPhone include cameras for photo and video, built-in Wi-Fi technology, 3G connectivity capabilities, and GPS technology.     

Google's talks with Verizon and Sprint are in an "advanced" stage, the WSJ said.           

The fact that Google has declined to make any official comment on the rumors has not dampened investors: The company's stock hit a new all-time high on Thursday of $713.72, up a solid 6.7 percent from its $668.51 closing price just one week prior, and worlds away from the $85-per-share price of its August 2004 IPO just over three years ago.

But the gPhone could be good news for more than just the company's shareholders. The company has long been a proponent of open operating systems and consumer choice: the two things about which most of us complain the most in having to deal with telecom providers. It can be assumed, given Google's focus on freeing up information via the Internet, that gPhones would be free of the Web access restraints that so often plague most existing wireless devices and networks, particularly in the U.S.  

Its heavyweight status in the business and technology worlds may give the company unprecedented bargaining power in how the gPhone is marketed and operated -- the company has already proved that it is not afraid to stand up to the telecom industry's most powerful players, including Verizon, in the push for more open access to wireless networks. Indeed, if the gPhone rumors are true, the dream of having a truly capable all-in-one handheld device seems now to be closer to reality than ever before.

And Google is not the tech industry heavyweight leading the slow but steady push for more openness in the cell phone realm: Earlier this week, Apple launched an "iPhone Dev Center" aimed at making it easier for software developers to make third-party Web applications for the iPhone handset, opening up the device which had previously only officially been sanctioned to run native apps.

As the WSJ points out, the possibility of all this increased openness doesn't come without potential down sides: Most notably, protecting privacy and information is sure to be a major issue. But I, for one, am overall very excited about a future in which I could have more freedom to access networks, and thus get more bang for my (many) phone bill bucks.  

Agree?  Disagree?  Couldn't care less about another hyped-up handset?  Let us know in the comments below.

--Colleen Taylor, contributing editor