Google Rides

It's almost official: Google has plans for cell phones, or perhaps we should say, google phones. They will almost certainly be based on something more than 3G architecture, although I'd wager their service will exist in an abstraction layer on top of 3G and wireless data services.

An abstraction of the service will allow a single phone provider to divvy up bandwidth between cell networks and VOIP, then figure out how much money gets saved and pass along the savings to the consumer, who is otherwise forced to buy two or three different cell phones. I'm just talking out loud here, but bear with me. You have a VOIP phone and you are driving through East Fort, Nowheresville. Naturally your phone is going to the cell towers, because there is nothing here. There's barely any cell phone coverage, but still, it's breaking down your voicestream into bytes and going out through the cell network. But say this new service you have on it is always looking for wireless networks at the same time. As you get closer to the city, this system can start offloading bytes onto the internet through wireless networks, which are a hell of a lot cheaper than bytes over a cell network. Not quite as reliable, but if you are in a big city you probably have access to three or more wireless networks at any given time. Balance the books between your time on 3G and your time on the wireless VOIPers and you have a net savings. Unfortunately most of us poor schlubs don't have any way of doing this, and so have to carry two phones to capitalize on the discrepancy between 3G and wireless availability. It's not a problem that's insolvable, it's just one of those needs no business has yet tried to fill.

So just providing the service at something like forty or fifty bucks a month would get customers and pay the bills, but we all know that's not what Google does. It makes its money by knowing you better than you know yourself, and a phone that relays position is truly an advertiser's wet dream come to slurping life. It's not any more of an intrusion than cell phones already are, since the FBI can turn them into listening devices whenever they want. So we might as well get used to others knowing exactly where we are at all times, listening to our most private moments, or even enjoy the fact that someone, or something, might be hearing us in the bathroom. "Hey, I think I should let you guys know, in detail, that I had some very spicy food last night!"

One business arising from this that I'd like to see is Google Rides. Imagine: every person with a google phone lists whether they want to sign up for this service. You have a cash account, you post how much per mile you want to charge. When you need a lift, hit the "Thumb" button, and any google phone user in (roughly) the same area sees your "thumb", and can give you a lift, or send you a message, or what-have-you. When the ride's done, accounts are settled invisibly, and if I'm google, I can shave off a couple of cents per transaction- and see who goes where, and whether or not they might like a car or whatever else I can sell them. With fuel prices going up for the rest of my natural life, this is something that could get very popular, and, as a nifty side effect, reduce the national epidemic of loneliness.