'GPhone' - Google's secret project to win lucrative ad market

Speculations are high in the air that the largest search engine on the Web, Google has developed a prototype cell phone, and for the purpose it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars.

Apparently understanding the increasing popularity of the newer generation of mobile phones, which offer advanced features, such as music and e-mail, on a single mobile phone, Google has reportedly entered the mobile telephony market.

According to a Wall Street Journal report published on Thursday, for its cell phone project Google is currently courting U.S. and European mobile operators.

Google is showing the prototype phones to several wireless carriers in the US to try to persuade them that their device comes embedded with the new Google services, such as maps and Yellow Pages-style local business searches and technical specifications that will enable the phone to offer a better mobile Web browsing experience than current products, the report said.

In the WSJ report, Anian, a Reuters company that tracks industry trends for institutional investors, cited as saying that Google last month had snapped up Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp to design a Linux software-based phone for launch in the first quarter of 2008.

Google’s newly developed customized handset, called "GooglePhone" that would truly be a free-access device, would likely reach markets within a year, as per the WSJ report.

The Anian reported, citing unnamed industry sources, that T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, would likely be Google's U.S. partner with France Telecom's Orange for marketing the ‘GooglePhones’ in other markets.

Online advertising and internet search giant, Google bags more than $40m a day from adverts next to search queries on personal computers, now it apparently intends to expand itself in the advertising section to mobile devices. The company believes with its own mobile device it would get access to unique local advertisers.

The Mountain View, California based search mammoth in May has indicated about its mobile phone project. "What's interesting about the ads in the mobile phone is that they are twice as profitable or more than the non-mobile phone ads because they're more personal," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has said at May’s D: All Things Digital conference.

A Google spokesman though yesterday declined to comment on a Google phone project, but said, "We are partnering with almost all of the carriers and manufacturers to get Google search and other Google applications onto their devices and networks."

Google’s intention to develop its own mobile device depicts its strong desire for success in the telecommunication market.

The competition among Microsoft, Google and Apple Inc. has intensified for the last few months as the three companies are making efforts to enter each others’ territories.

Whereas, the search mammoth has created an online software suit, intended to beat Microsoft’s office suit, Redmond based software company has launched its search engine, Live Search, which is crafted to compete with offerings from rival online powerhouses Google. Apple made its long-awaited entry into the cellphone world in January with the launch of its much-anticipated mobile phone, called iPhone.