I almost feel bad addressing that headline to “Google” proper — I’m sure they realize it too. But that doesn’t stop the mainstream media (and in this case, surprisingly, some tech bloggers too) from speculating once again about Google getting into the “telco business.” We admit it: we’ve done it too, but not so much lately and even in the past only with a very broad view of what it will mean in the future to be “a service provider” — a view, which, we’d argue, has actually come to pass.
All of which serves as a set-up to take a look at this story this week from CNNMoney, Google: Your New Phone Carrier.
Here’s its “proof” that Google will be getting into the network business:
Google Voice has 1.4 million users, making it Google’s “biggest weapon.”
Of course, Google Voice is basically a call-routing service that’s hard to use or even understand for mainstream users — and also relies heavily on “telco” infrastructure to actually work.
Buying the infrastructure: Google bid for 700 Mhz wireless spectrum, is rumored to be buying up dark fiber and launched its fiber for communities project.
Never mind that its wireless bid was basically a well-designed lark to get Verizon to “commit” to open access on that spectrum. As for the fiber business, there’s more than enough competition in this market on the business side without Google, while on the residential access side its big project has been delayed into 2011 (not exactly putting it on the fast track to making an industry impact).
Google has designed and licensed “the fastest-selling smartphone operating system on the planet” in Android (which CNNMoney described — I swear– as laying “the foundation for a future in retail.”)
…which it sells almost exclusively through the carriers it would propose to replace and which it failed miserably to sell and distribute on its own, leading Google’s Android head Andy Rubin to admit that Google “bit off more than we could chew.”
We understand how the business press (especially looking for stories and page views during the slow end of the year period) could cobble together this “evidence” into a Google-becomes-a-carrier story. But surprisingly, tech bloggers from TechCrunch (which speculated that Google might buy a “small” carrier like Sprint or build a white spaces network) and John Dvorak (who mainly points to antitrust concerns as the main thing holding Google back) seem keen on the idea too.
If Google were to buy Sprint, it would certainly be a blockbuster deal — but would it make any business sense? Sprint (and WiMax partner Clearwire) have demonstrated how expensive and financially challenging it is to build a 4G business almost from scratch. Those economics don’t change with Google as your sugar-daddy. Does Google really want to own and operate a complex radio/IP network — not to mention the sophisticated back-office systems required to deliver next-generation mobile broadband services? Google could instead go the virtual operator route, but why would it? Today with Android it is basically using the entire mobile carrier industry as its own personal MVNO.
We like tech speculation as much as the next guy, and we give Google an incredible amount of credit for making Android such a huge success. But let’s leave the network business to the network operators (much in the same way that telcos should — and probably ultimately will — leave the mobile app, content and advertising businesses to Google and its rivals).
And where does Google stand on all this speculation? CNNMoney asked. Its response: Google declined to comment.
On rumors.
Or nonsense.
Except that people hate weak socially useless firms like AT&T that can’t actually compete and only know how to circumvent the public good by buying off crooked politicians in an unacceptable sponsorship driven scheme known as lobbying.
Ads on phones? Are you kidding what moron thought that up? If people don’t want don’t to be interrupted at dinner what makes fools think they want to be interrupted in a meeting or in a personal phone call.
The real issue is that these firms don’t actually compete they gouge and create and incentivize artificial scarcity and like to engage in censorship schemes for profit. People who are engaged and thinking hate our fake sponsorship driven media and bought and paid for status quo in governance. No one has given up on making sure that we are communicating and building community vice paying to be force fed life wasting ads that lead to bad purchase and investment decisions and economic bubbles.
What we want is every intranet joined by mesh nets and all the dark fiber lit up. We don’t want these firms able to spend 7 billion of our money to lobby and drown out our political speech and try to argue that they should be able to censor us generally with anti neutrality schemes. There is no reason our laptops can’t communicate direct or carry a back channel and the same goes for all the intranets. Broadcast-cable-telco-publishing-fake news… every toll road company is soon to be obsolete and even if we get it wrong enough other countries will get it right that we will have to come around. Broadcast-one-way-modal sponsorship based socially useless society is over and so is the power base that depends on it.
The new kids practice head shots over and over. If you haven’t noticed they are not passive or vegetative- malnourished and angry possibly but still very much into direct action. They won’t accept opinion shapers and totalitarian communication structures or the despotism such structures bring.