Google's gPhone Draws a Crowd

Although the rumored mobile platform is yet to be announced, software developers already sense a big business opportunity

by Olga Kharif

Mention the name Google (GOOG) in cell-phone software circles these days and you're likely to get a lot of blank stares and awkward silence. It's not that these Silicon Valley startups have nothing to say about the world's largest Web search engine. The problem is, they can't. Many mobile-software developers in the Bay Area and beyond are hard at work cobbling together services and tools they hope will be packaged with a wireless operating system under wraps at Googleplex—and they've been sworn to secrecy.

Word's getting out. Among the companies jockeying for a place on Google's platform, BusinessWeek.com has learned, are Plusmo, a Santa Clara (Calif.) company that pulls together blogs and news items and sends them to cell phones, and Nuance Communications (NUAN), a Burlington (Mass.) maker of speech-recognition software used in mobile directory assistance services. Plusmo is owned by Reify Software, and its services are already available on phones made by Motorola (MOT), Research In Motion (RIM), and devices that use the Microsoft (MSFT) mobile operating system. Nuance technology, on devices such as Palm's (PALM) Treo 755p, lets users dial, dictate, and search using voice commands. Neither company would comment for this story.

Code Unlocked

Another startup said to be working with Google is 3Jam, a software maker in Menlo Park, Calif., that lets users send text messages to groups of friends. Representatives of 3Jam declined to comment.

Google also is mum on its plans, but the ongoing work with developers may give further evidence the company is moving ahead with a platform, possibly named gPhone, that brings together a range of services—from news to instant messaging to social-networking features to Web browsing—for mobile phones. "If they are evangelizing to mobile developers, they probably have a product coming soon," says Toni Schneider, chief executive of Web publisher Automattic, who created Yahoo!'s (YHOO) developer program. For developers, the Google platform could open a wide range of opportunities, including changing the way programmers use and build Google applications for mobile devices. And the interplay between Google and software developers is likely to leave an indelible mark on how wireless services are built and distributed—and who gets to share in the spoils.

Google's platform is expected to consist of an operating system, mobile versions of Google's existing software, and built-in tools that make it easier for developers to dive in. Google is expected to open up much of its gPhone programming code, known in industry parlance as the application programming interface (API), enabling mobile developers to easily integrate Google's applications with their own software and to distribute those applications to all users of the gPhone platform (BusinessWeek.com, 9/6/07), whatever phone model or carrier they happen to use.