Google's "G-Phone" an alligator versus bear fight?

Google's long rumored Google phone
or GPhone project has attracted a lot of comment and chatter, but not a lot of
good analysis to date. One big exception is a very good article last week by
Miguel Helft of the New York Times: "For
Google, Advertising and phones go together."

• The article accurately recasts
  the story not as competition to the Apple iphone device, but to Microsoft's
  Windows mobile software operating system.
  • The chatter seems to be fueled
    mostly by superficial similarities between the Apple iPhone and Google's
    rumored GPhone:
    • their one-letter sub-branding
      conventions,
    • their cultures of extreme secrecy
      about their plans, and
    • their similar "Midas touch" public
      relations successes.  
  • However, design of a physical object's
    hardware/software that interfaces with people in an
    intuitive way is far from Google's core competency in search and system
    software.
    • No one at Apple is losing sleep
      over being leapfrogged in device design by Google.

What this is really about is an
"alligator vs bear" fight.

• Alligator vs. bear fight? Stick
  with me.
• It's an excellent metaphor for who
  wins -- when the alligator and bear fight?
  • It depends.
  • It depends on whether the fight
    occurs in the alligator's element of the water of the swamp, or in the bear's
    element of hard ground. 

Google is the alligator and
Microsoft and the Wireless carriers are the bear.

• Google wants to pull
  Microsoft/wireless carriers into the profitless swamp of Linux "open" or free software, because
  Google's business model is the company/animal that can thrive in the swamp and
  doesn't require hard dollar subscriptions of dry land like Microsoft and
  wireless carriers do. 
• Google thrives in the Internet
  profit swamp because it lives indirectly off of online advertising not directly
  off of subscription services.
  • Google knows that if it can pull
    the bear into the swamp the fight is over.
  • Simply Google is trying to get the
    US Government to force the bears to go into the swamp by arguing the what's good
    for Google is good for consumers.

Bottom line: What's important here
is that the government not artficially flood the land with "open" water of "net
neutrality" and "open access" regulation that effectively swamp subscription
service models that are demand-funded directly by consumers and  favor the
Googleopoly business model that is supply-funded by advertisers.

• What's better for consumers long
  term?
  • Competition for consumers' hard
    earned dollars? or
  • One Googleopoly content
    bottleneck paid for by advertisers?  
• True competition best serves
  consumers, not Government-managed competition where the
  Government pre-determines market outcomes with preemptive open access of net
  neutrality regulation.