Q: So if this is not the Gphone, when will we see the Gphone, and what will it be?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We’re not announcing anything, but this is the platform for building a Gphone. It starts a whole wave of innovation …

Q: Does that mean there will be NO Google phone you can buy?

ES: Imagine not just one Gphone, but a thousand Gphones as a result of the partnerships … the many other people who will be joining the open initiative. We forgot to tell you that it’s available next week, and the terms are the broadest in the industry.

Q: ………..Gphone?

ES: We are not announcing a Google phone.

Q: Eric, I want to go back to the Gphone–what’s the deal?

ES: The deal is we don’t pre-announce products… if there were to be a Gphone, it would run Android.

–Excerpt from Google’s Nov. 5 Android analyst call

Google and Dell are collaborating on an Android-based cellphone?

Really?

Seems unlikely. Certainly, Google has said repeatedly that Android is intended not as a platform for building one Google-branded Gphone, but an entire ecosystem of them. And that will require the investment and commitment of a host of mobile-phone manufacturers–manufacturers who probably aren’t interested in developing handsets that run on a competitor’s platform.

A more likely scenario: Dell simply joins Google’s Open Handset Alliance and announces its own Android-based phone.

Google never said much about the acquisition or its plans for Rubin, but he’s been on the company’s payroll ever since, presumably holed up somewhere on its campus in Mountain View, Calif., working on something–perhaps with the “graphics-software fanatics” from Skia, another mysterious mobile start-up Google acquired in 2005. Together they’d make quite a team–Rubin with his passion for location-aware mobile devices and Skia’s engineers with theirs for the robust, but portable, graphics engines that could be used in them. Theoretically, of course.

Why the history lesson? Well, industry sources tell The Wall Street Journal that Google might publicly detail its long-rumored mobile-phone project as early as Monday. “U.S. carriers likely to be part of the announcement are T-Mobile and Sprint, according to our sources, but there could be others by the time Google says its piece,” the Journal reports. “While Sprint appears to be agreeing to work with Google to put the Web giant’s new Linux-based open operating system into phones, T-Mobile will probably go even further: the company has worked with Google for months on plans to build Google-powered phones with a variety of Google software and applications. As far as handset partners for Google, Taiwan’s HTC is a likely bet, our sources say. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are also possible, but we’ll wait and see the full roster. Equally interesting will be who isn’t on the list.”

Indeed. Because whoever’s not on that list could be losing out on a chance to become a true player in the mobile-search advertising business, which research outfit the Kelsey Group recently claimed will grow to $1.4 billion in 2012 from $33.2 million this year–in the United States alone.

The two companies are reportedly in talks to bring Google-powered phones to Verizon’s network. Said a source close to the companies, “There are good useful talks going on and they could result in a deal.”

Surprising to hear, given the war of words between the two during the past year. Guess there are no hard feelings over remarks like this one from John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, offered up last year during a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers. It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers.”

In a press conference following Google Analyst Day, company Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin confirmed Google’s plans to bid in the FCC’s upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction, but declined to discuss the mobile-phone strategy that might make use of it–apparently leaving that task to The Wall Street Journal.

According to a report in the publication today, Google will officially disclose its long-anticipated plans for Google-powered phones within the next two weeks. The devices will reportedly feature Google’s standard mobile applications (Maps, etc.) and more interestingly, a customized open-source operating system, which would allow third-party developers to build applications beyond those offered by Google. From the Journal:

The Google-powered phones are expected to wrap together several Google applications–among them, its search engine, Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail email–that have already made their way onto some mobile devices. The most radical element of the plan, though, is Google’s push to make the phones’ software ‘open’ right down to the operating system, the layer that controls applications and interacts with the hardware. That means independent software developers would get access to the tools they need to build additional phone features.

“Developers could, for instance, more easily create services that take advantage of users’ Global Positioning System location, contact lists and Web-browsing habits. They also would be able to interact with Google Maps and other Google applications. The idea is that a range of new social networking, mapping and other services would emerge, just as they have on the open, mostly unfettered Web. Google, meanwhile, could gather user data to show targeted ads to cellphone users.”

And don’t forget the mobile commerce element. Google-powered phones might even offer customers a way to pay for goods from vending machines and retailers via text message.

Anyway … The company has approached a number of handset makers and wireless operators about partnering in the effort, which it hopes to bring to market by the middle of 2008.

Previously:

• First Gphone Line Forms in New York Times Newsroom
• We Believe in One Godphone, the Handset Almighty …
• ‘We’re Not Doing a Mobile Phone’ Added to Norton Anthology of False Denials
• The Gphone: Exclusively From Sprint Nextel and Google?