Google’s Phone Plan Raises Concerns for Customers

The beta name for the Google phone platform is full of arrogance and disdain for potential customers. For people saying Google is the new Microsoft, Google just might be worse.

The long-rumored Google phone is instead a mobile platform code-named Android, to which I assign real meaning and connotations. Isn’t Google saying that it sees users as mindless automatons? For a company whose major product is an algorithm, should anyone really expect the Google huggy, kissy customer embrace? After all, search is very impersonal. People may search for things of personal interest, but the process is methodical on the front end and mathematical on the back end.

The Google worldview is looking more like this: Customers are programmed drones who repeatedly click the mouse on Google search and advertising services. Click, click, click. The mouse goes. Click. Click. Click. The stock ticker rises.

In May I asked: “Do Google’s attitudes make it more dangerous than Microsoft ever was supposed to be?” And answered: “Yes.” Android is more evidence of the Google attitude and mimicking of Microsoft of 15 years ago. For Android is an empty promise—the worst kind of vaporware. The company has a code name, a promised product, a late 2008 delivery date, a list of partners and almost no details. Either in its arrogance Google refuses to share details or else it has none to share. I say both are right.

Android is the worst kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) announcement. The timing is the giveaway: days after OpenSocial and right before Facebook announces its advertising platform. More broadly, Google has given enough lead time before next year’s FCC auction to create doubt about the company’s intentions. The lack of real Android information further feeds uncertainty about the extent of Google’s mobile intentions.

Google’s FCC auction pitch was for openness requirements that sounded a lot better in July than they do today. Based on the little Android information disclosed and reading between the lines, any openness benefits Google but eventually could lead to a closed-network model. Consumers could trade one master for another.

What Google wants is a more open mobile platform for selling contextual search and advertising. What the company expects: developer drones to embrace an SDK (software developer kit) slated for release next week and to begin creating products and services, now. But the phones are at least a year away. Meanwhile, developers could (and should) create real applications for real operating systems, like Symbian OS and Windows Mobile, today.

In Friday PBS blog post, “The Next Microsoft: Google is learning too well from the master,” Robert Cringely checklists some of the ways Google is out of touch with its customers and becoming a monopoly in the process. But he’s wrong about something. Google isn’t the “next Microsoft.” Google is worse than the last Microsoft.

Google controls more information and has a more crucial and growing economic role than Microsoft ever did. And based on the extent of information disclosure and other behavior, Google has about half Microsoft’s humility, which can’t be good.

Next Page: Google as “Deity?”