After Apple released the revolutionary iPhone earlier this year, there have been rumours that Google would release a phone too, dubbed the gPhone. Well, the project announced today by Google – called Android – is much more exciting than that, and means most mobile phones are likely to eventually become ‘gPhones’.
Similarly, the popularity of Facebook, myspace and other social networking sites has prompted some to wonder where all this is going; Microsoft just bought Facebook for $15 billion (yes, with a B) and other smaller sites (like Bebo in the UK) have a following of their own. Google steps in, again, to provide not another social networking site, but a whole new idea: Opensocial, which means most social networking sites are likely to become Google-powered.
See the trend? Google is an incredibly exciting company. Few average people realise the power of that corporation and the things that are being built as we speak. For the past few years, for example, Google has been quietly buying up thousands of miles of ‘dark fiber’ (fiber-optic cable that’s been laid but never turned on) in a project nobody quite knows the purpose of. There are plenty of theories of course: some think it’s in Google’s best interest to provide broadband internet access for free to average consumers, thus ensuring that everyone will be in a position to be exposed to Google’s main business: online advertising. Maybe it’s a Google-branded, next-generation communications service? Or it may play into the ‘Internet 2’ concept, a project whose latest tests indicate that we’ll someday soon be downloading Hollywood movies onto our flatscreen TVs and it’ll take only a few seconds per movie to do so. Of course, that would require everyone to be connected optically, directly using fiber-optic cable. Whatever it is, it’s huge.
Just like Android and Opensocial: two new services from Google which will rearrange the future of two big ideas that millions of people use on a daily basis, mobile phones and social networking. I’m not going to go on about this, since there are thousands of tech bloggers much better equipped to explain it, but – needless to say – it’s the result of private innovation like all other great ideas, it’s exciting, it’s the future, and it’s highly libertarian in origin.
Now, excuse me; I’ve got to use my mobile phone and then check what my friends are up to on Facebook. See you in the near future.