Googlephone: the return

Since the confirmation of the existence of the Nexus One, or, as people are terming it, the Google Phone, turned up on Friday, there has been a lot of speculation about how Google plans to sell it.

Well, how about by subsidising the hardware themselves, instead of the phone company?

How would that work? Well, first remember that Google is an advertising company that happens to have a huge internet arm. Then remember that one thing that advertising companies really like to know is consumer habits. How much do you think knowing where you are at all times would be worth to an advertising company?

It's going to be quite a bit, isn't it? And as sinister as it might sound, it would be really simple to get people to agree to hand that information over. All you do is give them a device that can tell them where the nearest branch of, say, Starbucks is, lets them catch up on their email over their coffee, then allows them to call their family and ask what's for dinner. And you want them to carry the device everywhere. What better than a phone?

If that phone then is subsided to make it almost an impulse level purchase, maybe £100 or so (which isn't cheap, but you want the users to have some interest in not losing it - tainted data is bad) despite having features otherwise found on £300+ phones, quite a lot of people are going to take you up on that. And then you have a bank of information on those customers which you can use as leverage to get your advertisers to pay more.

You want to target people who shop at Tesco but live closer to Asda? Easy! You want to target people who commute by train and buy coffee at the station? Can do that.

Don't think of it as a phone, but as a portable tracking device. But, admittedly a really shiny one...

I suspect I'd still get one if offered one, but then, I've already got a Hero, which can do a lot of the same tracking things. I've just never clicked on any adverts it's shown me either through AdMob or just whilst browsing. I'm probably in the Google files as "never seems to notice adverts", which presumably means I'm not getting one to play with as my Christmas present from Mountain View... Oh well...