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Google’s apps are smartphone ready, it’s partnering with cellular carriers, and the company may bid on wireless spectrum. Connect the dots.

Google looks set to be developing its own smartphone, it has been involved in auctions for the next band of cellphone networks, and it has already developed a dozen smartphone applications, including mobile versions of its search, maps, Gmail, calendar, and RSS reader tools.

The company is searching for an executive to head its mobile business development in North America. The candidate, according to the job description, should have “a thorough understanding of the mobile vertical, both from a carrier and a handset OEM perspective.”

Handset OEM perspective? That could be a reference to the rumored Google phone, reportedly to be designed in collaboration with Taiwanese handset maker HTC. Speculation has it that the phone would carry the Google brand and come with Google services and applications, perhaps running on a Google-developed mobile operating system.

Google has been expanding its mobile software portfolio since 2005, when it acquired Android, a developer of mobile phone operating systems. Google’s evasive about its plans for that technology, but the acquisition fueled predictions that Google will develop its own mobile OS, either for a Google phone or to run on handsets from other vendors. Any Google OS would be tightly integrated with the company’s search, maps, Gmail, voice over IP, and other apps.

Google mobile ads–text-based, targeted ads that appear with search results on cell phones–debuted last year in Japan and quickly spread worldwide. In general, users have been receptive to display ads on mobile screens, defying analysts’ predictions to the contrary. In September, Google extended its advertising platform to various forms of mobile content with AdSense for Mobile, software that aims ads at users based on the mobile content they’re downloading.

Google this year waded into the FCC’s planned auction of the last prime frequencies for advanced wireless services. CEO Eric Schmidt pledged $4.6 billion in bids.

Google-To-Go???
- SEARCH Google search for the small screen
- MAPS Gets mobile workers from point A to point B
- DOCS & SPREADSHEETS Downsized documents
- GMAIL A second in-box for businesspeople
- CALENDAR Track appointments by cell phone
- READER News in the palm of your hand
- SIMS Includes set-and-save location feature
- BLOGGER Post from the road

Overseas carriers such as Vodafone in Europe, KDDI in Japan, and China Mobile have agreed to display Google applications and services on their handsets, while in the United States, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile are listed as Google partners, though few details have been forthcoming.

Who stands to lose if Google succeeds? Microsoft, for one. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6 operating system is expected to ship on 20 million devices this year. The last thing Microsoft wants to see is an exploding population of smartphone users abandon Office, which also runs on smartphones, for Google’s free, untethered applications.

That’s a real risk. Sea Change Management, a small financial services company, switched last year from Microsoft Office to Google Apps (though it still uses Excel where necessary). The company accesses Docs & Spreadsheets from PCs and smartphones “anywhere in the world,” says managing principal Jason Winship. Employees collaborate using Gmail chat and shared documents.

summarised from Richard Martin’s excellent article in Information Week, here

Here’s an interesting piece from Michael Arrington at Techcrunch about how Google is lining up to tackel the “Facebook problem”…

Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5
Michael Arrington

Yesterday [DI> Sept 20th] a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.”

The meeting was so secret that all attendees had to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements strictly forbidding them from discussing what was shown to them at the meeting. Notwithstanding that NDA, I’ve now spoken with three of the attendees off record to get an understanding of what Google is planning. Google’s goal - to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

more here on Techcrunch…

This, from Techcrunch…

Google Launches Free 411 Service

Google threw a new product called Goog-411 into Google Labs today - a free telephone based information service that could replace toll 411 calls. About 2.6 billion 411 calls are made in the U.S. each year, and it is a $7 billion/year market.

Goog-411 can be accessed by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411. The product is completely automated and there is no way to talk to a human for additional or clarifying information. You tell it your city and state, and then ask for a specific business or business category. In my tests the product was excellent. Although the voice recognition was only working at about 70% efficiency, I just said “back” and retried when it didn’t understand what I said. Results are spoken back or text messaged back to you, and you are automatically put through to the phone number requested.

GOOG-411 is using Google’s normal local business information available on Google Maps and elsewhere. Businesses that want to add or correct data can do so here.

The product competes head on with Jingle Networks, which has taken 6% market share in the U.S. 411 business over the last year. AT&T is also experimenting with free 411 calls. None of these products come anywhere close to as good as TellMe’s rich client business information tool for mobile phones, but few phones support TellMe at this time (TellMe was recently acquired by Microsoft).

The paid 411 market is so dead. I’m betting these free alternatives take at least 50% market share within a couple of years.

Fresh from a deal with MySpace to power the site’s search and ads, Google is set to score another big partnership.

Friendster CEO Kent Lindstrom revealed today that the social network is going to partner with Google - the search giant will power Friendster’s search and text ads, just as it does on MySpace. The deal is to last two years and financials weren’t disclosed. But since Friendster reports less than 1 million monthly unique visitors, the agreement won’t be on the same scale as the $900 million Google-MySpace deal.

The hookup is another letdown for Yahoo, which currently powers Friendster search. It also seems to extend Google’s dominance of social networking ads: with Google powering the advertising and search on MySpace, Friendster and (eventually) YouTube, there can’t be many major networks left to hook up with. Facebook already struck a deal with Microsoft, so perhaps Google will set its sights on Bebo next?

OA by Pete Cashmore at Mashable is here

Business week has a long article about Yahoo’s Panama project and why it may not have the positive financial impact the company is hoping for. Yahoo’s goal for Panama is to make their pay-per-click advertising program more efficient at extracting dollars from advertisers. The details aren’t important, but the basic idea is that the highest bid on a keyword doesn’t guarantee it takes the top ad spot. A combination of highest bid and highest click through rate determines where ads are placed. That change should bump up the average cost-per-click, and have a positive effect on Yahoo’s revenue.

The article doesn’t mention Microsoft’s Adcenter product, which is a full generation beyond both Panama and Google’s existing product because it factors in demographic information about the person viewing the advertisement. While Microsoft hasn’t ramped up on advertisers yet, it’s clear that this is a three way race. An example of how much Microsoft means business is the fact that they probably bought their way into handling ads for Facebook. Without a revenue guarantee, Facebook would have gone with Google or Yahoo.

Frankly I don’t know who’s going to win the contextual advertising war over the long run. The important thing is that Yahoo has finally weaponed up, and the war is starting in earnest. Google has long hidden its revenue share details with partners, although the rumors suggest that they keep 50%ish of the gross revenue. This is way too much, and in a properly competitive market that percentage will tend towards zero as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all compete for the same page views. Profit will need to be generated based on new product features and efficiency gains, which is the way it should be. Of course, they’ll always own their own internal page views as well, and it will be an important factor. To get the participation of the big advertisers there needs to be enough inventory to make it worth their attention. And without a robust network of advertisers the auction prices won’t go high enough. Still, all three of these companies have massive internal page views to lure these big advertisers.

So while I don’t know how much of a difference Panama will make to Yahoo’s bottom line next year, I know that the fact that they are catching up to Google is good for all of us.

OA on is on Techcrunch here

Its been reported that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is planning to launch a new search engine next year, to be called Wikiasari.

He’s clearly aiming for Google. He says:

“Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results…Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: ‘this page is good, this page sucks.’ Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way…But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves. We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.”

The new company will be the third business division of Wikia, the for profit company that Wales founded in 2005 and is now led by CEO Gil Penchina. The other two business units are the main Wikia wiki site itself, and the recently launched OpenServing product.

Wikia has raised over $4 million in capital, including a recent round by Amazon.

OA is here