Google really is working on a cellphone

According to this article on Noticas.com (I provide the translation below):

Isabel Aguilera, Director General of Google in Spain and Portugal, has confirmed to Noticias.com that the company is working, “among other things”, on the development of a mobile telephone. “Part of the time of our engineers has been dedicated to the investigation of a mobile telephone which can access information”, Aguilera said to this portal.

The speculations on the possible entrance of Google into the area of design and sale of mobile telephones arose after the company recently published an ad in which it looked for engineers and analysts specializing in telecommunications. In that same ad, Google specified that it is in the experimentatal phase with diverse systems of wireless communications.

At a conference on the integration of Internet into business strategy, organized by the Association for the Progress of the Direction of the Mediterranean Zone, Isabel Aguilera has explained to Noticias.com that although 70% of the engineers' time is dedicated “to develop our nucleus of business, that is to say, search and advertising”, and 20% to develop “products that they have something to do with this nucleus”, is clear that 10% of that time is centered on product development “that at some time could have to do with our business”.

Within this last scope, Aigulera has indicated that “it has been investigating” a mobile telephone which can “access information”, in “a manner which extends the information society to devloping countries”. In this sense, the Director General of Google in Spain and Portugal has said that while “the products can seem strange, all comprise of our process of innovation”.

At the moment, the search engine has 36 products and “18 others that are in laboratory” and, therefore, in the experimental phase, including the above mentioned mobile telephone.

This confirms weeks of speculation. I apologize for any errors in translation; they are my own. Please post a comment if you see any such errors. Thanks. p.s., I told you so (update 4/12/2018)

Cingular cripples Google Maps on Cingular-branded phones

Draconian policies
Cingular's highly-restrictive Java security policies make using even popular applications like the Google Maps Java plug-in very tedious on Cingular branded phones. The policies are far more restrictive than the defaults for manufacturers of the phones. What this policy means is that we developers of applications must have a special relationship with Cingular, and get our applications signed by Cingular (who don't even trust us to get our own certificate; we must send our application to them), in order to even test our applications on our own phones.

Google Maps
Even Google's own Google Maps application is rendered more or less useless because the user is prompted over and over to make a connection to the web during casual use of the Google Maps Java plug-in. Granted Google could probably get their applications signed, but note that signing an application with a Cingular Preferred certificate will make it not install on non-Cingular phones. I assume this practice is similar amongst the other carriers, and so you would have to make numerous versions of your application to make it work, creating a different kind of problem for both users and developers.

Contrast with (better) more open policies
The manufacturers default firmware makes the phones far less restrictive. For example, Sony Ericsson will allow you to connect through bluetooth even from an unsigned application, but it will require prompting the user when the applictaion trys to connect. It will allow you to choose permissions on an app-by-app basis, and if you are silly enough to trust someone like Google, you can set a blanket permission on the app or at least an ask-once-per-session permission. Not the case if the phone is branded by Cingular; it is impossible to make such a connection without a Cingular Preferred certificate. The process for obtaining such a certificate is quite opaque; their website simply states that they are only handing out certificates to those with whom they already have a buisness relationship.

Legal trouble?
See these threads on their developer forums for several discussions between developers and Cingular representatives (free registration may be required). As outlined in this post from ArsTechnica a couple of days ago, this could result in legal trouble for the monopoly carriers once attention is paid to the problem. Perhaps we can stir up some attention by digging this post.

Solutions?
Currently, the only option open to an end-user (since we can't control what Google or Cingular do) is to go to sites such as Davinci Team or Wotan Server and get your phone debranded. This process is different from (and more risky than) unlocking the phone. It involves putting a new firmware on the phone, which causes you to lose all manufaturer-placed applications and features, along with any information you have stored on the phone. Aternately, you can get an unbranded, unlocked phone like this one.