Google Phone

The Google Phone will be available by the middle of 2008 .

Google, will give away its software to hand-set makers and then use the Google Phone’s openness as an invitation for software developers and content distributors to design applications for it. And as the cellphone morphs further into a mobile personal computer, a new software standard is likely taking shape. Whoever takes the lead in this market may become a technological gatekeeper wielding the same power, and reaping the same profits, that Microsoft does through its Windows operating system.

It plans to do that, industry executives said, by offering free mobile software and then presumably cashing in by providing a menu of services linked to those products, like e-mail, photos, news and other services.

NYTimes.com