Over the weekend, we wrote about Google & Orange’s plans to work on what amounts to be a Google Phone. Some folks wrote in and pointed out that close relationship between Google & Orange isn’t that difficult to imagine. For instance, one tipster reminded us that Rich Miner, VP of Mobile at Google, used to be a vice president of Advanced Service Development at Orange. He was at Android and then came to Google as part of the acquisition.
Miguel, was kind enough to write in and remind us of another Google mobile acquisition, Reqwireless. Google had bought them in 2005. The Waterloo, Ontario based start-up was working on technology that could help bring web-content to the mobile devices.
The company had developed a web browser and an email application when Google bought them, and you can see some of their fingerprints on the GMail Mobile app announced recently. Mark Evans, who now has a new home, must know more about Reqwireless, so we will wait for him to fill in the gaps.
dude, that mobile client has bosworth’s signature all over it…
as for the phone, why? why preload with branded crap and isolate the user experience? many people, young folks in particular, are using im and sms on their phones, and playing games..
espn learned this all the hard way, so what magical beans has elgoog purchased and how far down will they fall?
The more you look at Rich, the more it looks like voice recognition will be an important part of the calculus here as well:
http://twofones.typepad.com/twofones/2006/12/whatcanidof.html
Some people have pointed out a close relationship between Google & Orange isn ’t that difficult to imagine. For instance, one tipster reminded us that Rich Miner, VP of Mobile at Google, used to be a vice president of Advanced Service Development at Orange. He was at Android and then came to Google as part of the acquisition.