Google says that mobile comes first

Google is now creating things with the idea that mobile comes first. This is the point that the company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was making during Tuesday's keynote speech at the MWC. At the same time, the executive played down talk that the Mountain View based search firm wanted to turn carriers into dumbpipes with Google services on top. Whatever Google engineers develop for the desktop platforms will also be available in a mobile version. "Every product announcement we've done recently – of course we'll have a desktop version – but we'll also have one on a high-performance mobile phone,"said Schmidt. Like other high profile executives who recently have railed against bandwidth "hogs", Schmidt said that the mobile industry needs to get together to develop a solution to the problems created by those smartphone users constantly using the limited amount of bandwidth to send and receive data. Other things that the industry needs to brainstorm on is a way to harness the power of the cloud and to develop products that the public cannot live without.

As far as the carriers go, Schmidt took offense at a question from the audience that asked if Google plans on using the carriers as a dumbpipe, sending Google services through the system to the end user. Schmidt replied, "In the first place, I feel very, very strongly that we depend on the successful businesses of the operators globally, and I disagree with you that quote 'we're trying to turn the operators into a dumb pipe.'"

Operators are crucial to handle issues like security, dynamic signaling, and load balancing, the CEO noted. When asked if 5 years down the road, would cellphone users be considered customers of Google or of Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint, the Google CEO said that felt that the user would be both a customer of his firm and the carriers. "The relationship that the operator is going to have with the device is going to get much more sophisticated. The operator will have … the billing relationship, the support relationship, an educational relationship, a platform relationship, if you will," Schmidt said. "Google will also know more about the customer because it benefits the customer to tell Google more about them. The more we know about the customer, the better the quality of searches; the better the quality of the apps. They're different, however. The operator one is required, and the Google one will be optional. And today I would say the minority choose to [opt in], but I think over time a majority will."

source: PCMag