It's coming, it's coming ...

[KevinG]

... no, not what you think you dirty-minded people.

I am talking about the mobile web. We keep hearing proclamations of the ascendance of the mobile web, but keep getting disappointed with most of it turning out to be hype.

Most of the promises haven't been delivered yet, but it is coming.

I think one of the biggest challenges has been that mobile phone features and software are controlled by carriers and handset makers. Google is trying to change that.

Google Enters the Wireless World

What Apple began with its iPhone, Google is hoping to accelerate, with an ambitious plan to transform the software at the heart of cellphones.

Google, which wants to be as central to the coming wireless Web as it is to today’s PC-dominated Internet, announced on Monday that it was leading a broad industry effort to develop new software technologies aimed at turning cellphones into powerful mobile computers.

If successful, the effort will usher in new mobile devices that as the iPhone has done, will make it easier to use the Internet on the go. The phones, which would run on software that Google would give away to phone makers, could be cheaper and easier to customize.

And by giving outside software developers full access to a Google-powered phone’s functions, the alliance members hope for a proliferation of new PC-style programs and services, like social networking and video sharing.

“We’re human beings and we communicate, and that’s what the Internet social network phenomenon is all about,” said Robert Pepper, a former policy chief at the Federal Communications Commission. “The Internet is going mobile, and it’s not just top down, its one-to-one and many-to-many all at the same time, and that’s what the Google guys get.”

With the move, Google is trying to alter the dynamics of yet another industry. It is already using its deep pockets and innovative technology to shake up television, book publishing, computer software and advertising.

Full Story on The NY Times Web Site

This is a pretty interesting story to me.

If you don't read the whole thing, here are two points:

1. Google says they are NOT making a Google phone, like was widely speculated in the media.

(That would be stupid anyway. There's no shortage of phones, duh.)

2. The significance here is that this could help solve the problem I stated above:

"mobile phone features and software are controlled by carriers and handset makers."

Lots of possibilities open up when the features and software open up.