Google VoIP phone speculation already?

Ok, so my initial reaction to the Google VoIP phone news was rather skeptical. I imagined spending the rest of the day photoshopping and leaking various Google VoIP phone mock-ups and amassing tons of Digg traffic and perhaps a link from Slashdot. I thought this morning, "how quickly blogger speculation can jump to conclusions after a company makes a strategic purchase. Look at how within a week, we've gone from Google taking on Skype buy purchasing Gizmo5, a Skype-like peer-to-peer VoIP service, to Google manufacturing data-only VoIP phones with service contracts from its 'traffic-dumping' rival AT&T." But I guess sometimes, tech-blogger fantasies do come true. Alas TechCrunch has "absolutely confirmed" [1] that Google is working on their very own branded, fully Google controlled experience phone, so I can't devote a whole Editor's Corner to how silly we are being.

So now they've got a phone in the works and before that they were getting more VoIP technology and number portability. A few weeks ago Google was denying that its services should be regulated like other telcos, but after its latest moves, it seems like its only a matter of time before regulators start treating it like one.

Acquiring Gizmo5 provides Google with a PSTN link enabling inbound and outbound calls to conventional landline and cell phones. Google Voice already provides a single number to pull in calls from all the various places people might try to reach a user. They've already made moves to allow users to forward cellphone calls to their Google Voice voicemail box in a sort of poor man's number portability. Google Voice can provide users with phone numbers and both Google Talk and Gizmo5 can provide peer-to-peer voice calls between users (and with the Gizmo5 software outside lines as well).

Add all these capabilities to Google's penchant for offering free services based on advertising and put them all on a mobile phone that uses a 3G or 4G network to pump fast over-the-air data with no voice plan minute costs and you've got a dangerous offering that probably threatens just about everyone--particularly phone manufacturers and carrier voice revenues.  There has already been speculation that launching this phone would hurt Google's relationship with manufacturers that they have convinced to use the Android operating system. [2]  As for the carriers, claims have been made that the phone would not be tied to any particular one (although that would be highly doubtful in my opinion just based on the way the mobile phone world works).

If Google is successful, it won't be able to pass their data-service excuses by regulators or the taxman. It might take a behemoth like Google to do it, but the laws will change to include data-based calling within the telecommunications regulations and taxing. Unless of course we just want to tax the carrier's data plans more in Google's stead. And that brings up the net-neutrality debaters who might have a few things to say about Google trying to convince mobile phone users to ditch their old calling plans in favor of a mobile VoIP data-only plan as we should also remember that spectrum is a finite resource and Google doesn't own any of its own.
--Mike [3]