Google's Phone plans worry customers

We all expect Google to deliver on anything it touches, the way it has delivered for us on search which is why Google's Android announcement got a lot of attention. But not everyone is thrilled by it. Joe Wilcox at CIO Insight is one of those people. To quote,

What Google wants is a more open mobile platform for selling contextual search and advertising. What the company expects: developer drones to embrace an SDK (software developer kit) slated for release next week and to begin creating products and services, now. But the phones are at least a year away. Meanwhile, developers could (and should) create real applications for real operating systems, like Symbian OS and Windows Mobile, today.

He does have a point that Google has announced this platform maybe a bit too early. It seems to be defensive strategy not to lose developers. Google is fast learning that any traction with a new platform is dependent on having a large developer ecosystem. Microsoft learn this lesson a long time ago. And later on in the article Wilcox says,

Google controls more information and has a more crucial and growing economic role than Microsoft ever did. And based on the extent of information disclosure and other behavior, Google has about half Microsoft's humility, which can't be good.

Google is certainly huge. And it controls immense amount of information. How it manages that information, is left to be seen. It handled the fuss about Gmail privacy well. Lets see whether it manages customer concerns as well in the future.